I shook my head. "I have a delicate operation scheduled tomorrow. It is an operation I cannot postpone."
"It is an operation on Trella Mayo?"
I started. "How did you know that?"
"It is this operation that I wish you to perform for me," Keeshwar said. "Would it not be simple to let your knife slip, or to allow something to happen to her—for one million dollars!"
I do not remember clearly what happened next. I think I knocked the man down. I do remember stuffing his million dollars into his brief case and throwing it after him out of the door.
When I closed the door I was excited and unnerved. I found some sedative tablets and swallowed one. Then I sat down to think. Trella Mayo, beautiful, young and intelligent, a woman in a billion! Someone wanted to kill her.
She was only twenty-eight, yet her discoveries in physics had astounded the world. She might have taken first place in any beauty contest, yet she preferred working in a laboratory with men too old to notice her charms.
Her operation was not serious, except that it involved delicate skill. I resolved that nothing must happen during that operation the following day.
Two weeks later I visited Trella, now convalescing from her operation.
"I've wanted to talk to you, Fred," she said after I had taken her temperature, felt her pulse and gone through the usual ritual.