The Prince Charles Dam in Central Africa had broken and thousands had drowned because those in charge had relegated a warning letter to the cylindrical file.
A mine cave-in in Canada had extinguished three lives because a similar letter had been ignored.
By the time the fifth letter had been received, the S.M.M.R. had received the information and had begun its investigation. As an ex officio organ of the United States Government, it had ways and means of getting hold of the originals of the letters which had been received by the responsible persons in each of the disasters. All had been sent by the same man; all had been typed on the same machine; all had been mailed in New York.
When the sixth warning had come to the offices of Caribbean Trans-Air, the S.M.M.R., working through the FBI, had persuaded the company's officials to take the regularly scheduled aircraft off the run and substitute another while the regular ship was carefully inspected. But it was the replacement ship that came to pieces in midair.
The anonymous predictor, whoever he was, was a man of no mean ability.
Then letter number seven had been received by the United States Department of Space. It predicted that a meteor would smash into America's Moonbase One, completely destroying it.
Finally, a non-anonymous letter had come to the S.M.M.R. requesting admission to the society, enclosing the proper fee. The letter also said that the writer was interested in literature on the subjects of prescience, precognition, and/or prophecy, and would be interested in contacting anyone who had had experience with such phenomena.
Putting two and two together only yields four, no matter how often it's done, but two to the eighth power gives a nice, round two hundred fifty-six, which is something one can sink one's teeth into.
Brian Taggert cut off the phone connection. "That's it, Mike," he said to the senator. "We've got him."
Two of the Society's agents, both top-flight telepaths, had gone out to "Dr. Joachim's" place on Coney Island's Boardwalk, posing as customers—"clients" was the word Dr. Joachim preferred—and had done a thorough probing job.