"The error I made was in thinking that you had been forcibly abducted somehow—that you had been forced to write that third letter. It certainly looked like it, since I couldn't see any reason for you to hide anything from me.
"I didn't think you'd be in on anything as underhanded as this looked, so I assumed that you were acting against your will."
Scholar Rawlings smiled. "But you thought I was capable of underhanded tactics? That's not very flattering, young man."
Turnbull grinned. "I thought you were capable of kidnaping a man. Was I wrong?"
Rawlings laughed heartily. "Touché. Go on."
"Since artifacts had been found in a part of the City from which they had previously been removed, I thought that Jim, here, had found a ... well, a cover-up. It looked as though some of the alien machines were being moved around in order to conceal the fact that someone was keeping something hidden. Like, for instance, a new weapon, or a device that would give a man more power than he should rightfully have."
"Such as?" Duckworth asked.
"Such as invisibility, or a cheap method of transmutation, or even a new and faster space drive. I wasn't sure, but it certainly looked like it might be something of that sort."
Rawlings nodded thoughtfully. "A very good intuition, considering the fact that you had a bit of erroneous data."