Coburn continued to grin uncontrollably, even as he said in a tone of
apology: "I hate to do this, but I have to be sure...."
He swung. He connected with Dillon's nose. Blood started.
Coburn zestfully let himself be thrown out, while Dillon roared and
tried to get at him through the flying wedge of waiters. He felt an
enormous relaxation on the way back to his office in another cab. He was
a trifle battered, but it was worth it.
* * * * *
Back in the office he called Hallen again. And again Hallen answered. He
sounded guilty and worried.
"I don't know whether I'm crazy or not," he said bitterly. "But I was in
your office. I saw your secretary there--and she didn't feel pins stuck
in her. And something did happen to those Bulgarians that the Greeks
don't know anything about, or the Americans either. So you're to tell
your story to the high brass down in Athens. I think you'll be locked up
afterward as a lunatic--and me with you for believing my own eyes. But a
plane's being readied."
"Where do I meet you?" asked Coburn.
Hallen told him. A certain room out at the airport. Coburn hung up. The
telephone rang instantly. He was on the way out, but he turned back and
answered it. Janice's voice--amazingly convincing--came from the
instrument. And at the first words his throat went dry. Because it
couldn't be Janice.
"I've been trying to get you. Have you tried to reach me?"
"Why, no. Why?"
Janice's voice said: "I've something interesting to tell you. I left the
office an hour ago. I'm at the place where I live when I'm in Salonika.
Write down the address. Can you come here? I've found out something
astonishing!"
He wrote down the address. He had a feeling of nightmarishness. This was
not Janice--
"I'm clearing up some matters you'll guess at," he said grimly, "so I
may be a little while getting there. You'll wait?"
He hung up. And then with a rather ghastly humor he took some pins from
a box on the desk and worked absorbedly at bending one around the inside
of the band of the seal ring he wore on his right hand.
* * * * *
But he didn't go to the telephoned address. He went to the Breen
Foundation. And Janice was there. She was the real Janice. He knew it
instantly he saw her. She was panic-stricken when he told her of his own
telephone experience. Her teeth chattered. But she knew--instinctively,
she said--that he was himself. She got into the cab with him.
They reached the airport and found the office Hallen had named. The
lettering on it, in Greek and French, said that it was a reception room
for official visitors only.
"Our status is uncertain," said Coburn drily. "We may be official
guests, or we may be crazy. It's a toss-up which status sticks."
He opened the door and looked carefully inside before he entered. Hallen
was there. There was a lean, hard-bitten colonel of the American liaison
force in Greece. There was a Greek general, pudgy and genial, standing
with his back to a window and his hands clasped behind him. There were
two Greek colonels and a major. They regarded him soberly.
"Howdo, Coburn," said Hallen painfully. "You're heading for Athens, you
know. This is Miss Ames? But these gentlemen have ... ah ... a special
concern with that business up-country. They'd like to hear your story
before you leave."
"I suppose," said Coburn curtly, "it's a sort of preliminary commission
in lunacy."
But he shook hands all around. He kept his left hand in his coat pocket
as he shook hands with his right. His revolver was in his left-hand
pocket now too. The Greek general beamed at him. The American colonel's
eyes were hard and suspicious. One of the two Greek colonels was very
slightly cross-eyed. The Greek major shook hands solemnly.
Coburn took a deep breath. "I know my tale sounds crazy," he said, "but
... I had a telephone call just now. Hallen will bear me out that my
secretary was impersonated by somebody else this afternoon."
"I've told them that," said Hallen unhappily.
"And something was impersonating Dillon up in the hills," finished
Coburn. "I've reason to believe that at this address"--and he handed the
address he'd written down to Hallen--"a ... creature will be found who
will look most convincingly like Miss Ames, here. You might send and
see."
The American colonel snorted: "This whole tale's preposterous! It's an
attempt to cash in on the actual mystery of what happened up-country."
The Greek general protested gently. His English was so heavily accented
as to be hard to understand, but he pointed out that Coburn knew details
of the event in Naousa that only someone who had been there could know.
"True enough," said the American officer darkly, "but he can tell the
truth now, before we make fools of ourselves sending him to Athens to be
unmasked. Suppose," he said unpleasantly, "you give us the actual
facts!"
Coburn nodded. "The idea you find you can't take is that creatures that
aren't human can be on Earth and pass for human beings. There's some
evidence on that right here." He nodded to the Greek major who was the
junior officer in the room. "Major, will you show these other gentlemen
the palm of your hand?"
The Greek major frowned perplexedly. He lifted his hand and looked at
it. Then his face went absolutely impassive.
"I'm ready to shoot!" snapped Coburn. "Show them your hand. I can tell
now."
He felt the tensing of the others in the room, not toward the major but
toward him. They were preparing to jump him, thinking him mad.
But the major grinned ruefully: "Clever, Mr. Coburn! But how did you
pick me out?"
Then there was a sensation of intolerable brightness all around. But it
was not actual light. It was a sensation inside one's brain.
Coburn felt himself falling. He knew, somehow, that the others were
falling too. He saw everyone in the room in the act of slumping limply
to the floor--all but the Greek major. And Coburn felt a bitter,
despairing fury as consciousness left him.