"Look out!" Alan cried, suddenly wary. He brushed past the old man and collided with someone there in the darkness. Briefly, they struggled, then something struck the side of Alan's head. He fell to his knees, groping blindly ahead. His arms wrapped about a pair of legs, clung there grimly. Something lashed out at his chest, spilling him over on his back.
"Alan, where are you?" Eugene Talbrick said. "What's the matter?" Then Eugene Talbrick screamed once and was still. A weight fell across Alan, pinning him to the floor. Half-conscious, he rolled the heavy thing off him and scrambled unsteadily to his hands and knees. The door opened and closed swiftly, light from the corridor streaming in, then fading. Alan staggered to the door, opened it.
Outside in the corridor, there was no one.
Inside, the slender form of Eugene Talbrick was stretched out on its back. A red pool of blood was spreading on the carpet under him. Alan knew he was dead without feeling for the pulse.
A knife had been plunged into Eugene Talbrick's side, immediately below the heart.
CHAPTER III
"Now, just a minute, Alan," Bennett Keifer said later. "Before you go off half-cocked like that—"
"Eugene made some accusations, then died," Alan insisted, "before he could show me the proof."
"We're all grownups here, Alan," Keifer said easily. There was no mistaking his tone. He would assume Alan was a grownup. "You're twenty-five," he went on. "One day soon you'll take over the Federation movement, so you can't afford to be impetuous. You tried to find that letter, didn't you?"