"What do you see?" demanded Tani in a suppressed voice.

Vickers and the girl were in the house of Seth Adda, an ex-senator and a friend of Tani's father. He had been happy to lend Tani his house, which was on the eighth level flush against the Arabian Embassy.

Vickers was dressed in a snuff-brown burnoose, the national Arab costume. He said:

"There's a sleeping room just beyond the wall. This part of the embassy must be the private quarters of one of the officials. The room opens on a hall. There are six—seven—eight other bedrooms along it. I think it's the harem. There's a swimming pool to the left."

"Can you see him?" Tani pleaded.

"Yes. But not very plainly. He's in a tiny cell almost in the center of the embassy. There's a guard in front of the door."

"Is—is he all right? They haven't hurt him?"

Vickers concentrated on the vague outlines of the man lying on his bunk. A thin man, elderly, with hollow cheeks. "So that's Doctor Fralick," he thought, "greatest theoretical physicist since Einstein."

He said aloud:

"He seems okay."