The doorman of his building preceded him at a rapid pace down the side corridor that led to his private elevator and flourished aside for him to enter. The car stopped on the twenty-third floor. With a heart that had sunk so deep as to have practically foundered, Hebster picked his way along the wide-eyed clerical stares that lined the corridor. At the entrance to General Laboratory 23B, two tall men in the gray livery of his personal bodyguard moved apart to let him enter. If they had been recalled after having been told to take the day off, it meant that a full-dress emergency was being observed. He hoped that it had been declared in time to prevent any publicity leakage.
It had, Greta Seidenheim assured him. “I was down here applying the clamps five minutes after the fuss began. Floors twenty-one through twenty-five are closed off and all outside lines are being monitored. You can keep your employees an hour at most past five o’clock—which gives you a maximum of two hours and fourteen minutes.”
He followed her green-tipped fingernail to the far corner of the lab where a body lay wrapped in murky rags. Theseus. Protruding from his back was the yellowed ivory handle of quite an old German S.S. dagger, 1942 edition. The silver swastika on the hilt had been replaced by an ornate symbol—an HF. Blood had soaked Theseus’ long matted hair into an ugly red rug.
A dead Primey, Hebster thought, staring down hopelessly. In his building, in the laboratory to which the Primey had been spirited two or three jumps ahead of Yost and Funatti. This was capital offense material—if the courts ever got a chance to weigh it.
“Look at the dirty Primey-lover!” a slightly familiar voice jeered on his right. “He’s scared! Make money out of that, Hebster!”
The corporation president strolled over to the thin man with the knobby, completely shaven head who was tied to an unused steampipe. The man’s tie, which hung outside his laboratory smock, sported an unusual ornament about halfway down. It took Hebster several seconds to identify it. A miniature gold safety razor upon a black “3.”
“He’s a third-echelon official of Humanity First!”
“He’s also Charlie Verus of Hebster Laboratories,” an extremely short man with a corrugated forehead told him. “My name is Margritt, Mr. Hebster, Dr. J.H. Margritt. I spoke to you on the communicator when the Primeys arrived.”
Hebster shook his head determinedly. He waved back the other scientists who were milling around him self-consciously. “How long have third-echelon officials, let alone ordinary members of Humanity First, been receiving salary checks in my laboratories?”
“I don’t know.” Margritt shrugged up at him. “Theoretically no Firsters can be Hebster employees. Personnel is supposed to be twice as efficient as the SIC when it comes to sifting background. They probably are. But what can they do when an employee joins Humanity First after he passed his probationary period? These proselytizing times you’d need a complete force of secret police to keep tabs on all the new converts!”