Since the letter had been sent to the laboratory instead of his home! But it was impossible!
He searched feverishly through his pile of daily mail for the envelope in which the letter had come. The address stared up at him, unmistakably and fearfully legible. The name of his company. The number of the room he worked in. In short, the address that he had never given them!
"Get hold of yourself," he commanded his frightened mind. "There's some perfectly logical, easy explanation for this. They looked it up in the directory of the Institute of Physics. Or in the alumni directory of the university. Or—or—"
But the more he thought about it, the more sinister it seemed. His laboratory address was available, but why should POSAT take the trouble of looking it up? Some prudent impulse had led him to withhold that particular bit of information, yet now, for some reason of their own, POSAT had unearthed the information.
His wife's words echoed in his mind, "Could they be a spy ring? Subversive agents?"
Don shook his head as though to clear away the confusion. His conservative habit of thought made him reject that explanation as too melodramatic.
At least one decision was easier to reach because of his doubts. Now he knew he had to keep his appointment with the Grand Chairman of POSAT.
He scribbled a memo to the department office stating that he would not be at work on Tuesday.
At first Don Alford had some trouble locating the POSAT headquarters. It seemed to him that the block in which the street number would fall was occupied entirely by a huge sprawling warehouse, of concrete construction, and almost entirely windowless. It was recessed from the street in several places to make room for the small, shabby buildings of a wholesale pharmacy, a printer's plant, an upholstering shop, and was also indented by alleys lined with loading platforms.