"Thank you, sir," said Major Dugan. Passing Sarah's desk, he smiled directly and personally at her. There was the Irish in his smile, a quirk which promised mischief, which hinted that there was always fun in life. He said to her, quietly, but without pausing in his soundless measured steps toward the general's office:
"And thank you, Captain, for making me at home."
He gave her a glance which made her almost blush. Not until Coppersmith slammed the door behind them both did Sarah realize what was so strange about this Major Dugan: poise. He had effected every movement, no matter how commonplace, with the complete efficiency of a cat questing for prey. Yet the smile he had given her had in it nothing more than an unusual amount of humor and simple friendliness.
Sarah watched the base of her desk lamp. When the tiny switch glowed, she was to cut in the dictaphone and take down the conversation in the inner room. But the signal did not come. Impatiently, she ranged her needle-sharp pencils beside one another and looked out the window. From the fifth floor of the Dai Gojugo Ginko she could see most of Tokyo running south and east, past burned-out Asakusa to the water gleaming like a ribbon in the distance. She wondered what Dugan had been doing out there, in the quiet, wet city, himself as imperturbable as rain. She could imagine that his unostentatious friendliness would work miracles, but surely there was more than mere friendliness to being a spy…?
Just who was Dugan? And why hadn't she heard of him before? As Coppersmith's secretary, she knew almost everything; as his assistant executive, she reminded the general himself of his own secrets. Yet this suave friendly man had come in from the rain bone dry. Where had he left his coat and cap? How had he known where the cloakroom was?
The light went on.
Sarah picked up one of the three telephones on her desk. It was not a telephone at all, though it looked like one, but merely the receiver for the ultrasensitive microphone which, hidden in a handsome desk calendar, stood in the middle of General Coppersmith's office.
"I tell you, we've got to handle it from here," the general was saying. "Even if the plane did make it, we won't have enough information to go on. You can't keep the peace by letting a neighbor think he has the jump on you. You're supposed to know Japan, Major. You were here before the war?"
"Yes, sir," said the strange friendly voice." I was here."
Sarah could visualize General Coppersmith's baleful yellow-brown eyes, his brushed auburn hair, his surgically neat shaven cheeks as, in his most formidable and lionlike manner, he put this next question: