The door opened. Dugan stood in the doorway, inches shorter than General Coppersmith. Sarah thought, for a moment, that he looked like an image of the Buddha. There was an unearthly Oriental calm on his face. Coppersmith, usually a model of dignity, looked positively flustered beside him.
"Put it out of your mind, Major. We do the military end. They do the political. Come back in an hour. I'll have Dr. Swanson and Captain Lomax — you've met her, here, haven't you? — brief you on what we do know."
"Yes, sir," said Dugan to the general, but his eyes were on Sarah when he said it. She could not tell how his expression changed but she got the idea he was twinkling at her. Coppersmith gave the major and herself a bleak nod and closed his door.
Dugan looked down at her. "You didn't miss much. I just tried to give your general a lecture on politics and he wouldn't take it."
Sarah stood up. She didn't know what else to do. "Miss much? Miss what? I don't know what you mean…"
"Your pencils. Two of them are blunt. Your hair, right above your left ear — it's a little disarranged. You must have been taking our conversation down, probably from one of those phones. I saw the general working some kind of a switch with his knee and I thought he had somebody listening in, just in case I tried to compromise him."
Sarah tried to get indignant, but it didn't work; she could feel a smile pushing its way up and breaking irresistibly upon the corners of her mouth.
Major Dugan was grinning very frankly now. She wondered how she could ever have thought — two minutes before — that he looked like an Oriental. He looked like the friendly and amusing kind of Irishman — the kind who will make jokes out of troubles even if it's raining sudden death. Dugan changed his tone. With sympathetic friendliness he said:
"You didn't miss anything, Captain. I'll tell you sometime. And we'll keep his secret for him, won't we?"
Sarah didn't dare deny anything or admit anything. Feeling herself a fool, she could only say, "What secret?"