"Thank you, sir."
After Frank Corson left, Superintendent Maynard sorted a memo out of the pile on his desk. The memo concerned Frank Corson. Superintendent Maynard reread it and thought how well things usually worked out. Now it wouldn't be necessary to have that talk with Corson about sloppy work. Obviously there had been something on the young intern's mind for weeks now. Too bad. But let the Minnesota hospital, wherever it was, worry about the trouble and perhaps put Corson on the right track again.
He was their baby now.
Maynard took Corson's card from the files and wrote across it: Transfer approved with regret.
Brent Taber stood in the shelter of a doorway on the Lower East Side of Manhattan and watched an entrance across the street. He had been there for over an hour.
Another hour passed and Taber shifted from one aching foot to the other as a man in a blue suit emerged from the entrance and moved off down the street.
When the man had turned a corner, Taber crossed over and looked up at the brownstone. It was a perfect place to hide—one of the many rooming houses in the city where, if you paid your rent and kept your peace, no one cared who you were or where you came from.
Not even, Taber reflected, if you had been born in a laboratory and had come from someplace among the stars.
He climbed the steps of the brownstone and tried the knob. The door opened. He went inside and found himself in a drab, dark hall furnished with an umbrella stand, a worn carpet, and a table spread with mail.