Neville went straight to the great library where the I.P. records are kept. An attendant brought him the bulky folder on the old Lunko gang. Neville found it engrossing reading, and the day waned and night came before he had committed all its contents to memory.
Billy Neville obtained a televise connection with Tellurian headquarters.
"How are your shadows doing?"
He had already learned the real identity of the man he had trailed from Pallas; he was an actor belonging to the original ring and went by the name of Hallam.
"Our shadows are doing fine," replied the officer at the other end, "but your friend Hallam seems unhappy. He made two calls on a high officer of the Radiation Corporation and after the second one he came very angry and ruffled looking. He has also called on several other persons, known to us as extortioners, and at least two of those are on his trail with blood in their eye."
"I know," chuckled Neville. "He sold 'em a bill of goods—rolls of blank paper. They think they've been double-crossed. And they have, only I'm the guy that did it. But say, we can't have him killed—not yet. Better round up all his contacts and put 'em away, incommunicado. I'm hopping a rocket right now and will be with you in a jiffy."
It did not take the police long to make the little jump from Luna to Tellus, and a couple of hours later Neville was confronting Hallam in a special cell. In his hands he held a first-class ticket to Titan in the Saturn group, which had come out of Hallam's pocket, as well as a handbill of the showboat announcing an appearance there in the near future.
"I just wanted to study your current rig, Hallam," explained Neville, opening up his makeup kit. "Impersonation is a game that more than one can play at. I'm going in your place to Titan. I'm a teeny-weeny bit curious as to what happens to your victims. Extortion carries good stiff sentences, but they lack the finality of that for murder."
The Neville that left the cell was the exact duplicate of Hallam, and by dint of exacting search of the actor's trick garments and the use of adroit questioning under pressure, the Special Investigator knew exactly what he had to do. And he knew ever better, after the spaceship he was riding settled down into the receiving berth on Titan. An actor of Lunko's—a skinny, gaunt fellow—was on hand to meet him, and a little later they conferred in a well-screened spot with three of Lunko's jackals.