"Thanks, no," said Mannheim. "Coffee will do fine. How about you, Stanton?"
Bart Stanton shook his head. "I'd love to have some coffee, but I'll leave the alcohol alone. I'd just have the luck to be finishing a drink when our friend, the Nipe, popped in on us. And when I do meet him, I'm going to need every microsecond of reflex speed I can scrape up."
They walked down a soft-floored, warmly lit corridor to an elevator which whisked them up to the main level of the Neurophysical Institute Building.
Another corridor led them to a room that might have been the common room of one of the more exclusive men's clubs. There were soft chairs and shelves of books and reading tables and smoking stands, all quietly luxurious. There was no one in the room when the three men entered.
"We can have some privacy here," Dr. Farnsworth said. "None of the rest of the staff will come in until we're through."
He walked over to a table, where an urn of coffee radiated soft warmth. "Cream and sugar over there on the tray," he said as he began to fill cups.
The cups were filled and the three men sat down in a triangle of chairs before any of them spoke again. Then Bart Stanton said:
"I made the remark that if the Nipe doesn't have time to eat his victims he just beats them to death, and you started to say something, Colonel."
Colonel Mannheim took a sip from his cup before he spoke. "Yes. I was going to say that, according to the evidence we have, he always beats his victims to death, whether he manages to eat them or not."
"Oh?" Stanton looked thoughtful.