The Saint Magazine. January 1967. Volume 24, No. 5.

Send a Man from Intrex by Michael Avallone

Illusions die hard. We like to insist that “it can’t happen here” — and, of course, most of the time it doesn’t. But just as much as death and violence, including mob violence, have become aspects of our times, so have these skirmishes in the shadows — to which we ourselves may at times be unwitting witnesses — which often determine what happens next in the Cold War. And, if you doubt this, remember Gordon Lonsdale — or Colonel Abel.

When two agents meet, the sparks don’t necessarily fly upward. They can shoot down, around and out. Particularly when both agents are trained killers and each share the mutual love and respect of an organization known as the International Trade Experts. Code name, alphabetic shorthand, INTREX.[1]

Where these two agents met and why they are important is of little consequence. It should be sufficient to say that their names are David Seven and Miles Running Bear Farmer.

David Seven is deceptively lean, quiet-voiced and quiet-faced. The world knows him as one of the finest young legal minds available for outlandish fees.

Miles Running Bear Farmer is that rarity among statistics: a full-blooded Cherokee Indian who went to college, graduated with honors and leaped to the forefront as an outstanding exponent of the new approach in his particular sphere of his field — public buildings, municipal centers, auditoriums.

These then are our heroes.

Under the separate covers of Law and Architecture, they work for INTREX. As field agents, scientific assassins and underground tools for the organization which masks its workings and endeavors as a philanthropic, benevolent society, founded by anonymous millionaires, who would gladly pick up the tab for all the deserving poor of the world.

Were you to look INTREX up as a matter of curiosity or business interest, you would find that their Dunn & Bradstreet rating is Triple A; that their offices are located in an immense warehouse complex on the lower East Side of Manhattan, with a rear development that meets the waterfront of the East River. Many of the members of INTREX are prominently listed in all the Who’s Who extant on the professions and sciences. In truth, all of this corporation’s members are outstanding professional men in the fields of electronics, medicine, engineering, chemistry, archeology, geology, palaeontology, atomic research, law, logistics, biology, botany, etc. There is no field of human endeavor and knowledge in which the International Trade Experts do not have a leading representative.

David Seven and Miles Running Bear Farmer were meeting at the corner of Forty Second Street and Fifth Avenue, because INTREX always sends a man, sometimes two, when a problem or a difficulty crops up that may threaten the security of the world.

On the morning of July 13th, the old world seemed to be in hot water again.

Seven and Farmer arranged their rendezvous under the guise of a chance meeting.

“Hey, Dave!”

“Miles—”

“You old sonofagun, what are you doing here?”

“I’m out buying. Cathy needs a new handbag—”

“Got time for a cup of coffee?”

“Sure thing, Miles. Wait’ll I tell Cathy I ran into you like this—”

Forty Second and Fifth is a Times Square in microcosm. All sorts of people rushing back and forth, heavy traffic; the crowds are eternally on the go. The only aspect of the Square that is missing are the garish movie houses, the book stores and the loitering drifters. Thus, two old friends can meet and the world will hardly pause to take a second look.

Cathy Darrow was David Seven’s official secretary down at INTREX. But just as the world was fooled, so was she. She never would have believed that her dreamboat boss, with his quiet ways and kindly smile, was a cold-blooded executioner type spy just like the ones she saw in the movies. The same sort of bad guessing would apply to Miles Running Bear Farmer.

The Mayflower Coffee Shop was half-filled. The time was not yet noon and the crowds hurrying in for lunch were still an hour away.

They found a square, cozy brown table just off from the nook of a bar. Just above them, the spaced floorboard of a staircase rose to the next level.

David Seven ordered coffee for them both. The waitress, not so prim or trim, smiled blankly and moved on her errand. Miles Running Bear Farmer took out a pack of cigarettes and placed it on the table near his right hand.

“Thought you gave up smoking,” Seven said.

“Swore off there for awhile. I don’t know. I need one now and then. I have cut down. Twelve a day.”

“That’s something,” Seven agreed, his cold blue eyes quiet as always. In reality, the cigarette pack was a tape recorder device which would magnetize all that they said or might overhear. Its range was contained within the perimeter of their seats.

“Shall we talk about The Saint?” Farmer said suddenly, his tone low and unbantering.

“Let’s.”

Farmer nodded, eyes peeled on the bar a few feet away, where a solitary citizen, not too young, was brooding into a glass of amber beer. The bartender, beefy in the typical clichè way, was running some tap water, rinsing glasses.

“I followed Baroda up from the Chanin Building. He turned at the corner of Forty Second and Fifth. I closed in on him, ready to make the pinch. We were right outside 489 — I was sure he had the microfilm on him. But when I grabbed him and took him to Headquarters, he was clean and bare as a new kid whistle.”

“Go on.”

“Then I remembered the boxes. All kinds of boxes and cartons on the sidewalk fronting 489. They were stacked to one side before the glass doors. When I ducked back, figuring Baroda had somehow planted the microfilm in one of those boxes when he saw me coming. I was too late. The boxes and cartons had disappeared.”

“Weren’t the boxes sealed and tied up or something?”

“Sure — but you know how it is when people are moving things. Some boxes are overloaded — they bulge — and they have spots where the flaps poke up. Baroda could easily have tucked the microfilm into one of those boxes. It’s the only place he could have stashed it.”

Seven stirred his coffee. “How can you be sure he didn’t ditch the film before he got to 489? He could have dumped it anywhere along the route.”

“Not a chance. I saw it pass over to him by his accomplice on the outside of the Chanin. I was five feet behind him all the way up Forty Two Street. Then he turned that corner on Fifth and I jumped him. If he had dropped it in a litter basket or anywhere along the way I would have seen him.”

“He saw you. He knew you were tailing him.”

“Sure,” Farmer smiled. “I was a redskin tracking a pioneer. He saw me all right. But forget that. Sam wants that film back. I’m sure I know where it is.”

“Dear lovely Sam.” Sam was Miss Samantha Follet, the lovely, intelligent woman who ostensibly was the business manager of the International Trade Experts. (She didn’t know that her two top agents referred to her as Sam. They were somehow certain she wouldn’t have cared for their flippancy. INTREX was Samantha Follet’s reason for living, having lost a husband and daughter to the Chinese Reds in the purge of ’59.

“So here’s what I got,” Farmer stared at Seven over the rim of his cup. The dark brown, finely boned face, was something you’d find on a coin. “I checked back. Those boxes belonged to The Saint Magazine — if you read mysteries, you ought to know. Seems the editor was moving from 489 Fifth to 508 Fifth.”

“Hey — that’s right next door—”

“Entrance on Forty Second,” Farmer concurred. “It’s sort of a one man operation. Fellow named Hans Stefan Santesson is editor. He has no secretary. He does everything but sweep out the place. He picks the stories for the issue, proofs them, edits them. Haven’t met him yet but the elevator starter at 489 was a fountain of information.”

“Definitely not the spy type, I take it?”

“Not at all! Besides, I checked him out. He’s clean. He’s a top editor, has a rep that goes back more than twenty years. He’s more inclined to fight for civil rights than to take them away.”

“Does he own the magazine or is there a publisher?”

Farmer scowled. “An editor own the magazine he works on? Where have you been, dear old David? The American edition is published under an arrangement with Saint Magazines, Inc., and runs an article or a Saint story by Charteris each month. The mag itself is clear. It’s just a case of our boy Baroda taking the first out that came his way. He had the film, he had to get rid of it. He saw the boxes and — you can take it from there.”

“I take it Baroda wouldn’t talk down at Headquarters?”

“A clam,” Farmer agreed. “You know Sam won’t let us Third Degree these characters. We tried some happy shots on him. The sodium penthatol but — all he did was get silly and make up a lot of nursery rhymes. I guess his bosses were ready for that one.”

“Who are his bosses? The Little Foxes again?” Seven was alluding to one of the international spy scene’s worst offenders; the Foxes sold anything and everything to the highest bidder, without a social scheme of their own.

“No, but we can guess. Since the microfilm is a picture of the missile sites in Cuba again, it doesn’t take much headwork to pick the interested parties.”

“Red China, of course.”

“Of course. More coffee?”

“No. Let’s finish up and call on Hans Stefan Santesson at 508. Maybe we can give him a hand unpacking all those boxes. Poor fellah. If he works as hard as you say he does, he must need ten arms.”

Miles Running Bear Farmer nodded and picked up his cigarette pack. It was then that he suddenly felt strange. There was a smell of burnt peanuts on the roof of his soft palate, reaching the passages of his nostrils. He blinked at David Seven, not surprised to see a funny expression in Seven’s blue eyes.

“Dave — the coffee—”

“Yeah — I think we’ve been had—”

They had.

They both started to rise. Abruptly, their movements were sluggish and uncontrolled. David Seven swore under his breath. He tried to reach across the short table to catch Miles Running Bear Farmer. He was too late. The architect toppled, the whites of his eyes showing. He took his chair with him to the floor.

Seven swayed and then he too, fell heavily, a sensation of spinning, popping noises in his head.

Somewhere in the Mayflower coffee shop, a woman customer cried out in terror.

The solitary drinker at the bar seemed suddenly in favor of leaving the vicinity immediately.

He was halfway to the front glass doors, moving rapidly, before anyone noticed him. Even then, all attention was centered on the table near the bar where two men had suddenly passed out.

The time was eleven forty five.

“Enjoy your sabbatical?” Miss Samantha Follet said cooly.

Cathy Darrow folded her steno pad over, sat down in the chair across from the executive desk, and smiled prettily. The golden fuzz of her head shone like a star in the sunlight pouring in through the windows of Miss Follet’s office. It was a beautiful day.

“Yes, thank you. Miami was fun. All I did was swim and sit on the beach all day.”

“Wouldn’t know that by the look of you. I thought blondes boiled like lobsters. You look as smooth skinned as ever.”

Coming from Miss Follet, that was more than a compliment. It was the mountain coming to Mahomet. Cathy Darrow always likened the female boss of International Trade Experts to Joan Crawford. Miss F. was just as smooth, gorgeous and perfectly turned out. The same crisp, every-hair-in-place look. Miss Follet’s voice was perfect, too. Level, controlled and utterly right for the way she came on.

“You’re in the typing pool I take it, Miss Darrow.”

“Yes, M’am.”

“Good. I jacked you out of David Seven’s office because he will be busy for a few days and there is a stack of reports that will need transcribing. In triplicate. Everything in triplicate. Then we’ll run it through the three Xerox machines.”

“Yes, Miss Follet.” The young blonde stared at the older brunette. A mischievous dimple toiled at Cathy Darrow’s mouth corner. “Did Mr. Seven miss me?”

Miss Follet’s eyebrows arched. A cool smile was her answer.

“Go get yourself some coffee, Miss Darrow. I’ll see you in twenty minutes. I’ll be ready then.”

Cathy got to her feet, nodded, and left the room. Almost meekly. Her office romance with David Seven, no matter how off-hand she had tried to make it seem, had not escaped the eagle eye of Miss Follet. Fat chance anyone had of hiding anything from her.

Samantha Follet stared at the door when she was gone. Then she revolved quickly in her chair and pressed an orange-hued button that nippled out from a long panel of colored buzzers on the right hand side of her big desk.

A voice sounded in the wide, plushy office, coming from nowhere, apparently.

“Yes, Miss Follet?” a feminine voice said. “Communications, here.”

“Any word from Mr. Seven and Mr. Farmer?”

“No. Last contact was at ten this morning. From Grand Central Station.”

“Call me as soon as they report in. Please tell Mr. Slocum to ready Baroda for me. I’ll be up in a minute.”

“Will do.”

Miss Follet stepped to the rear of her office. Here, wide purple drapes, a pattern of Paisley, closed off the wall. She swept them aside, revealing a steel door. She stepped into this and within seconds was in another section of the vast warehouse complex. An elevator car carried her up one flight. She left the car, leaving the door open and entered a long gloomy passageway whose steel sides and tiled floor was illuminated by fluorescent lighting under normal circumstances. Miss Follet stopped before a low door whose single opening was a grilled aperture. She opened this door too and stepped inside.

The cell was square, without furnishings of any kind. A short, fattish man with a mop of dark, curly hair stood in the center of the room. His hands were manacled behind him. His clothes were a mere short-sleeved white shirt, plain trousers and a belt. He wore no shoes. He had obviously chosen to pace the floor of the cell, rather than subside to the bare floor and give in to despair. When he saw Miss Follet, his face lit up and he smiled bleakly. He looked Russian but in truth, Paul Baroda was a citizen of the world, despite his Hungarian lineage.

“Ah,” he said thickly, his accent slurred. “The Queen Bee herself.”

“Have you changed your mind, Mr. Baroda?” Samantha Follet stood but five paces away, arms folded, regarding him in her cool, detached manner.

Baroda wagged his head.

“No, of course not. Pay me a million dollars and you can have the microfilm. Failing that, I’m a sphinx. Rules of the game, my dear.”

“I’m glad you talk of rules, Mr. Baroda. That will help you understand why you will get nothing. Why we can’t bargain. I’m afraid you leave me an uncomfortable alternative.”

Baroda scowled at her. “What, then? More needles and pins? More drugs? You know how they have failed. I was well prepared for my assignment. I was instructed to memorize nonsense should you once again put me under, as the saying goes. Don’t be a fool, Miss Follet. Pay the money — I give you the film.”

“How can you do that when you don’t have it on your person?”

“But I know where it is. You see — what you Americans call the big difference.”

“Quite so.” Miss Follet smiled. A beautiful smile. “At 503 Fifth Avenue, in the office of the Editor of the Saint Magazine.”

Baroda blanched. His small eyes were a dead giveaway. He shook his head. “If you say so — but you are wrong — I know of no such place — you bluff—”

“No, I do not. So you see I do know where the microfilm is and there is no further need for keeping you alive.”

Baroda blinked. His tongue stalled in his mouth; the little eyes widened. These sort of things just didn’t happen — when one fell into the hands of the Americans—

But they did.

Miss Follet produced a small, nickle-plated automatic from somewhere about her person and leveled it at Paul Baroda.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Baroda,” she said softly, a curious glint in her darkish eyes. “I’m truly sorry.”

Her finger tightened on the trigger and Paul Baroda screamed.

Like a woman.

“Closed,” David Seven said. “How do you like those apples?”

Miles Running Bear Farmer squinted at the glass door on the fourth floor of the building numbered 503. The time was now verging on one o’clock. David Seven wasn’t making jokes. The elevator man had just told them that Santesson was up in Massachusetts, speaking at some college there.

“Saved by the bell, Dave. If we can’t get in, then our friend who doped the coffee couldn’t either.” Farmer tried the door, his strong hands grappling with the knob. “Stuck. Good and stuck. Door feels like it hasn’t been opened in years.”

Seven stared down the corridor. Other offices and other doors indicated forms of life and activity going on all about them. Seven rubbed his jaw, thoughtfully.

“Time,” he said. “Let’s put our heads together.”

“Right here in public? We’d look silly.”

“Then let’s think out loud a little.”

“Check.”

“Okay.” Seven looked towards the elevator around the bend. It was creaking upward, past their floor. His manner was off-hand but Farmer wasn’t fooled. The old legal mind was flying like ninety.

“We followed your hunch. Baroda dropped the microfilm where you said. He can’t come for it himself because he’s currently under lock and key. So you call me, I meet you and we stop for coffee and making plans. We are overheard.”

“Or seen,” Farmer sighed. “We aren’t exactly non-descript. I may have my skin painted white like the rest of you good Americans.”

“Shut up. Our coffee is doped — not poisoned — for which I give thanks — by who and why?”

“Am I permitted to guess?”

“Be my guest.” The light easy bantering exchange concealed a multitude of doubts and fears, and had the unusual nature of making both agents better performers. Their rapport and the results it had achieved, was the envy of all the two-man teams of INTREX.

Farmer held up two fingers. “The waitress could be in on it. But I scratch her. After all, she was working there. Nobody could know we were going to the Mayflower for java. So — I pick the lonely beer drinker at the bar. He could have done it a lot of ways. When the waitress comes to us, she had to pass him. It’s either him or someone in the kitchen but I scratch that idea too. No, we were shadowed into the Mayflower.”

“I go along with that. Now the why of it.”

“Too easy. Our man wanted to beat us here. He did. We were out better than forty five minutes and spent twenty more explaining to that cop why we passed out. So I say he came, saw this sign and couldn’t get in. Not in broad daylight anyway. I say he’s making some plans for later. Or else he took a wax impression and went and had himself a key made.”

Seven smiled. “Is that what you’d do?”

“Uh huh.”

“You win. So would I. What do you suggest we do now?”

“One of us should keep this door in sight. The other should go call Sam. Just in case our man gets anxious and won’t wait until tonight. Leastways, I think I was right about one thing.”

“Like what?”

“Like Baroda finding a new use for boxes on the sidewalk. Great drop for hot microfilm, huh?”

“Peachy,” Seven agreed. “Okay. You stay put. I’ll go talk to Sam. You know how I love to hear her dulcet tones.”

“I sure do. And Cathy Darrow’s and all the living dolls in the universe. Why don’t you get married, Dave, and get out of this business” You’re too much of a lover to be a good spy.”

“Thanks, Tonto. I’ll put in a good word for you too, someday.”

Miles Running Bear Farmer laughed and took up a position in the hallway. David Seven took the elevator down to the street level and hunted up a telephone.

Miles had the right idea.

It was time to send up some smoke signals.

Whatever happened, all joking to one side, the microfilm had to be recovered. It was a damn important strip of film. Explosive enough to give the Chinese Reds a big march on missiles.

Lucky break about the magazine guy taking off like that. Thanks to this, their boo-boo in the coffee shop, would not cost INTREX a thing. You weren’t granted too many reprieves in the espionage racket. So you had to take what came.

With a jaundiced eye, of course.

He found a phone booth in the open air, one of two side by side on the very corner of Fifth and Forty Second. The weather was bright and warm.

Maybe they could wrap the case up early and he could still wangle a dinner date for himself with Cathy Darrow. The beautiful blonde was back from her Miami vacation and he hadn’t even had a chance to say hello yet.

Miss Follet had returned to her desk. The sunlight slanting into the wide office made the fashionable sequins beaded on her shirtwaist glitter like diamonds. She had long since dismissed Cathy Darrow, sending the girl off with a literal ton of material to transcribe.

The telephone on the desk rang about two o’clock. She picked it up and cradled it to her immaculate ear. Miss Follet always wore her silver-tinted hair in a stylish coiffure that augmented her career woman appearance.

“Yes?”

“Outside call, Miss Follet. Mr. Seven.”

She frowned. “I’ll take the call.”

In a moment, David Seven’s breezy tone filled the wire.

“Miss Follet?”

“Why aren’t you using your transmitter device, Mr. Seven? Is something wrong?”

“Ah, you have me there. Fact is, I was caught without my devices this morning when Mr. Farmer called me. No matter. I’ve scrambled this phone box with a screamer so it’s okay.” The ‘screamer’ was a coin-sized blob of metal which would make their conversation unintelligible should anyone cut in on the call. “I wanted to make a report on the Baroda business.”

“Go ahead. But first — please give me today’s password.”

He restrained a chuckle, knowing how she felt about his own speaking voice. It was easy to mimic, she was fond of reminding him, so she had set up a daily set of odd words to keep the enemy baffled. And him — on his toes.

“Supercallafragilisticexpialadocious. No more like that, please.”

“Never mind. Go on.”

He told her all that had happened, skipping the coffee routine in the Mayflower. That could keep until later. No sense in worrying her, not that she ever let her hair down. But he knew how fond she was also of her subordinates. As well as her fine record.

Miss Follet seemed pleased with his report.

“Stay with it then. Hope you find it.”

“How’s Baroda?”

Miss Follet smiled to herself, in memory, of a deceit that had worked. One could usually bank on the credulity of the enemy where scruples were concerned.

“Tell Mr. Farmer that his conjecture was correct. The microfilm is on the premises as he thought. Mr. Baroda finally surrendered the information willingly.”

“What — how did you get him to talk?”

“Feminine psychology, Mr. Seven. I made him think I was going to shoot him. In his horror, he told everything.”

David Seven chuckled. “You’re a caution.”

“You be the same. Is that all?”

“Yes. I’ll get back to you. Meanwhile, my very best to Miss Harrow.”

“Miss Darrow will be too busy typing all day to receive your best wishes. Keep your mind on your job, Mr. Seven.”

“Yes, Miss Follet.”

When he hung up, he was laughing, knowing what fun he got out of needling the cool clear-eyed head of INTREX. She would never be a woman to him because she had buried her soft side forever with the man who had been her husband and the girl who had been her daughter. Still, it wasn’t right for such a lovely woman to be asexual. It went against the grain, being such a waste of delectable woman power. Now, Cathy Darrow was a different case entirely—

Grimly, he forgot about Cathy and got his mind back to the business at hand. Sam was right about that, blast her. Good agents, the live ones at any rate, always minded the store. That way they never pushed up daisies in some dirty abandoned field.

But he was still chuckling to himself as he stepped out of the elevator on the fourth floor. He rounded the bend — and stopped laughing. His hand streaked for his shoulder holster but he was about ten seconds too late.

The man standing behind Miles Running Bear Farmer had a dark, snout nosed pistol pressed to the temple of Miles’ impassive face. It was apparent from the frozen tableau of the encounter that the man with the gun had just put in an appearance.

“Stand still,” the man hissed. “The only reason you are alive is that I have suddenly realized that you can help me. After all, there are so many cartons inside.” He gestured with a free hand toward the door with the sign on it. “So many boxes and I do not know exactly in which one my colleague placed the microfilm. Don’t make a sound. I have a key for the door and in a moment, we will have a quiet little time of it.”

“I could yell for help,” Seven said softly.

“I don’t think so,” the man said. His face was dim and not too clear in the gloom of the hall. He moved to the door, drawing Miles with him, a shining, new key jutting from his free hand. He inserted it in the lock.

“Why not?”

“You like your friend too much to do that.”

“How right you are,” David Seven sighed and raised both his arms, watching the stranger with the gun open the door to Santesson’s office.

New York, New York. A wonderful town.

They were being hijacked in broad daylight, with other offices within spitting distance, and not one person was abroad in the hall or needed the men’s room. Wasn’t that always the way?

It all happened so fast. The three of them, Miles, the stranger and Seven were inside the deserted office within seconds. The door closed on the lock, the stranger pushed Miles Running Bear Farmer forward and wagged the snout-nosed pistol menacingly.

“Good,” he growled. “Very good. We shall have the place to ourselves. What fun.”

He didn’t look like the fun-loving type. Besides the ominous gun, his eyes were like glass; Black, glittering opaques of cruelty and meanness. The texture of his face was pitted and ugly. Not the sort of face one would like to spend any time with.

His attire was meaningless and drab. A Henry Higgins hat was pulled down over his forehead; the one incongruous note in his appearance. The hat was so amiable and gay; he was so contrastingly opposite that effect.

“Now,” said the man with the gun. “Let us see. Where shall we begin?”

It was a good question, and it hung unanswered by either Seven or Miles Running Bear Farmer.

The office, for that was all it was, one large wide room, was a veritable warehouse of boxes, cartons, barrels and packages. All tied with string and gummed with tape.

The owners hadn’t done a lick of unwrapping yet.

From floor to ceiling, to either side of the floor space, the ceiling overflowed with cartons and containers in which had been stored all that might make up the editorial and reference inventory of a magazine. Some of the containers were marked with a. shipping pen, denoting what was stored inside. Some were not marked at all. One wouldn’t know where to begin unless one was the gentleman who had designated the boxes in the very first place. Six high multi-shelved bookcases lined the Walls, suggesting where the books, at least, would eventually wind up.

There was a plain, unvarnished desk by an unshaded window that overlooked Forty Second Street. One could see the offices of the building across the way, with many people moving back and forth.

“I shall put the gun in my pocket,” the man said in a dry flat voice. “It will still be covering you. Pray begin.”

David Seven stared at him coldly.

“Where would you suggest, friend?”

“Select a carton at random,” the man purred, without humor. “One is as good as another.”

“Sure,” Farmer cracked wise. “Eeenie, meenie, minie moe.”

“Which one’s Moe?” Seven asked in all seriousness.

“That one,” Farmer said, pointing at a particularly bulging carton on the outer edges of the stacked mass. “Note the pawnbroker’s fullness of the box—”

“Stop it,” the man rasped, his voice rising in anger. “Begin somewhere and stop this foolishness. It should not be so bad — the item would be at the top of whichever box it is in. Baroda did not have time to dig too deep.”

The gun in the pocket poked warningly. Seven shrugged and set his hands on the first carton. Miles Running Bear Farmer selected another one. In no time at all, they were each attacking their job with some industry.

But it wasn’t as easy as the gun-bearing man had suggested. The cartons contained magazines, books, file folders and assorted office materiel. They had been packed to the fullest. They were crammed and jammed, bursting as it were. Yet it was as the man had said. Baroda would have had to place the microfilm close to the top of the right carton or box or container.

Ten boxes down, Seven paused to wipe a hand across his sweaty forehead. It was hot work. The office was close, there was no air conditioner and it was a hot July day. Farmer was puffing now, too.

“Don’t palm the item should you find it,” the man said. “The sooner it turns up the better for both of you.”

“Sure,” Seven agreed, “and then you’ll thank us and let us waltz on out of here. My foot.”

“David,” Farmer mocked, “you’ll make him angry with us.”

“I will? That’s nice.”

The man with the Henry Higgins hat and the dark pistol suddenly laughed. The sound was guttural and ugly in the golden gloom of the office.

“Continue,” he said. “Be as foolish as you like. But find the microfilm. That is all that interests me.”

David Seven nodded. “Righto, Governor. How about playing that radio while we’re busy? I could do with a spot of music.”

There was a tiny portable on the rather empty desk. Miles Running Bear Farmer looked at it as if he was seeing it for the first time. His brown face was almost startled. Then a dawning comprehension lit up his eyes.

“Yeah. The radio. That’s a swell idea.” Almost gleefully, he ripped open another carton, exploring the top with his big hands.

Seven approached another box. The man with the gun made not a move toward the radio. Seven shrugged.

“No music to soothe the savage beast?”

“No, my friends. No music. Please continue. Time is running out.” The man was emphatic in his denial.

The men of INTREX quietly and with sudden resolution went on with their unpacking. Their captor sat down on one corner of the desk, blocking the radio, his back to the window. He had produced the gun once more. It seemed more menacing then ever.

Time didn’t run. It crawled.

The only noises were the unsuccessful efforts of David Seven and Miles Running Bear Farmer to find the precious microfilm.

Suddenly, rather inexplicably, the radio began to play. It had to be the radio. What else could abruptly emit such a caterwaul of sounds, a jumble of voices and a high-pitched current of static?

There was a garbled, frightening squall of noise. The man on the desk jumped a foot as if his position on the corner of the desk had become a hot seat. He shot to the floor, whirling, his eyes blinking rapidly.

Just as he did so, Seven and Farmer stopped what they were doing and descended upon him from their vantage points close by. They formed an incredible flying wedge of muscle and co-ordinated movement. Calculated training does have its ultimate purpose.

The man in the Henry Higgins hat squeaked in fear and surprise, the dark gun thrusting upward. His pitted face came apart with fright and anger combined. His eyes popped.

The gun barked, the fast explosions it began to make rushing around the carton-stuffed office like the echoes of a bad argument.

And still the strange and curious radio sound continued to splutter and squawk. A medley of voices. Indistinguishable and parroty.

Like an LP record might sound, played at the wrong speed.

No one would have paid any attention to the taxicab shooting down Fifth Avenue. No one save a person looking for a cab on a hot day. But this one was full up and of no use even to the most frantic New Yorker. A steady, choking stream of traffic flowed South toward Fourteenth Street.

The three men sitting closely in the rear seat seemed very congenial friends. The man crushed in the middle, a jaunty Henry Higgins hat clamped down over his forehead, was smiling. Flanking him was a quiet-faced handsome man and a solemn, unsmiling Indian sort of a fellow. The Indian’s face was classic and proud.

“One word, dear heart,” David Seven smiled, “and I’ll blow you right out of this cab.” For emphasis, he prodded the middle man with the buried nose of his own gun. “Now, tell us your name, please.”

“Foreman. Peter Foreman.”

“That’s nice. Hear that, Miles? This is the Foreman of the operation.”

Miles Running Bear Farmer winced but he held a roll of microfilm up to the light, squinted at it, and then restored it to a safe place on his person. “No puns, please. Ask him if he has any friends.”

Seven complied. “Do you have any friends, Mr. Foreman?”

“I will tell you nothing,” growled Foreman, staring ahead in a surly manner.

“No friends. That’s sad. But it makes me happy. I don’t like you, Mr. Foreman. I don’t like your Mr. Baroda either. In fact, I dislike all spies.”

The taxicab driver’s face was a mask of wonder, reflected in the rear-view mirror. But there was no mistaking what he was. The face he bore could only have been achieved in a decade of driving a taxi. Grinding away, making decisions every five seconds, fighting for a place in the crowded New York streets.

“Dave,” Miles said warningly. “The driver.”

Seven smiled, raising his voice. “Him? We’re actors, buddy. Rehearsing for TV. Don’t mind us. Just running through our lines.”

“It’s your cab,” the driver said, his eyes wary. But a mild smile played on his face. He was interested, in spite of his native cynicism.

“Now, Mr. Foreman. We have the film, we have you. And your partner. If you cooperate, things will go easier on you. Wow, isn’t that a corny line, I ask you.”

Peter Foreman colored. “Stop. You have made a fool of me twice over. That business with the tape recorder. But I do not have to listen to this insufferable nonsense, do I? I will say no more.” He folded his arms determinedly and scowled ahead. Miles Running Bear Farmer chuckled.

“Don’t feel too bad. It’s fooled better men than you. Coming on loud like that, at the wrong speed, it would tend to startle a person.” He was too pleased with the efficacy of the stunt to quibble. Fast-thinking Seven had tipped him to it by asking about the radio and he had set the button on the tiny cigarette package tape recorder in his side pocket; the one he had used in the Mayflower. The sounds of his own voice and Seven’s, badly scrambled, had unified into a good effect.

“All right, Foreman,” Seven said, all the banter gone from his voice. “Here’s how it poses. For what you’ve done, or tried to do, the government would be interested in your spending a great deal of time behind bars. Maybe, with a war on, they could even have you shot. I don’t really know. But I’m a lawyer — an experienced one — I can tell you that things would go pretty much better for you if you turn state’s evidence.”

“You mean government’s evidence,” Farmer chipped in.

“Is that what I mean? Okay. How about it, Mr. Foreman?”

“No, for the last time,” Foreman said. “Do your worst. I will say nothing. I have failed.”

“You sure have,” Seven agreed. “And you won’t get another chance. This microfilm business is serious espionage, old boy. You may get life.”

He abandoned the subject and settled back against the cushions. He kept the nose of his gun jammed into Peter Foreman’s middle. The cab was air-conditioned, fortunately. Outside the windows, struggling, hot and weary human beings, reeled along the sidewalks and pavements. The flood tide of progress.

Miles Running Bear Farmer began to whistle. A tuneless, chanting something that smacked of redskins dancing around a bonfire, donning war paint and getting ready to make war talk.

“Miles,” Seven sighed.

“No ear for good music?”

“It’s not that. We’re being followed. A Pontiac. License plate from Michigan. See the beautiful blue paint job.”

It was true. Behind them, no matter how slow or fast their own cab darted, no where or how it careered, glued onto their very tail was the Pontiac. And Mr. Foreman was smiling the smile of he who sees rescue in the offing.

Seven pondered, thinking fast.

Farmer craned his head. “What’ll we do? Can’t drive right up to Headquarters with those birds on our backs. After all, what will Sam think of us?”

Seven nodded, reached forward and tapped the cabbie on the shoulder. “Driver, you’re being followed.”

The cabbie spun his head, belligerency and wonder fighting for control of his face. “Yeah? Where?”

“The Pontiac. Now if you’d like to make an extra five dollar bill and show us exactly how well you know New York and what you can do with this jalopy of yours — why, you’ll lose that car, won’t you?”

The cabbie frowned, keeping his eye on the throttling traffic that hemmed in his vehicle on all sides.

“Thought you guys said you were actors?”

“Oh, but we are. Good ones, too. Now those people back there in the Pontiac are bad ones. Got it?”

“For five bucks,” the cabbie averred, “I could disappear into the ground.”

“That’s what I want you to do.”

“Watch me.”

He was good for the word. Suddenly, like a rabbit jumping across the highway, the cab sprang forward, skirted a sedan, nosed ahead of it and rapidly careened in and among an assortment of machines. Almost immediately, the Pontiac was lost from view.

“Still going to the same address?” the cabbie shouted, employing every trick of his trade. The cab whined, roared and droned, meshing gears, slamming on brakes, starting and stopping. Literally hurtling along. A dizzy panorama of New York rushed by the windows.

“Same address,” David Seven said.

“Fine work, gentlemen,” Miss Samantha Follet said, from the depths of her polished desk. She was especially attractive in white shirtwaist, pearl-buttoned down the front, with long fluffy sleeves tapering to her wrists. Her smooth, beautiful face and hair was, as ever, acutely out of place, when one considered her true occupation. But as a front and a facade, she was eminently in keeping with her environs. “Mr. Foreman has been housed close to Mr. Baroda. And we have the film.”

David Seven and Miles Running Bear Farmer, seated in the rounded ornate chairs of the office, watched her very carefully. They were never familiar with “Sam” as they were with each other. Somehow, the idea was unthinkable.

“It was my goof,” Farmer said. “I lost the film in the first place. It was up to me to get it back.”

“Good thing you remembered about those boxes on the sidewalk. A one-in-a-million hunch,” Miss Follet smiled. “What about that editorial office?”

“The Saint?” Seven laughed. “When Mr. Santesson gets back from Massachusetts, he’s going to think Santa’s little helpers were there. We opened a lot of boxes.”

“Intrex’s little helpers,” Farmer disagreed. “I found it in about the tenth one we opened. Right on top of a stack of hard cover books. Smack between a copy of The Koran and The Bride Wore Black by Cornell Woolrich.”

Seven frowned at him. “You really read murder mysteries? Tsk, tsk. Up on all the book titles and authors too. I’m surprised at you.”

Miss Follet folded her fingers together, making a lovely arch.

“Well, now that Baroda and Foreman are under wraps, would you like to see the microfilm before we send it along to the Federal Bureau?”

“Sure thing,” Seven said. “I’d be very much interested to see what all the shouting was about.”

“Shooting you mean,” Farmer amended.

“Good. Come along then. We’ll go to the projection room upstairs.” She rose from her desk. Tall, imperial. A queen. Seven and Farmer sprang erect. They followed Miss Follet to the draped concealment of the rear wall of the office.

Upstairs, the projection room was a cubicle affair set back from the main passageway. Beyond the working environs of the International Trade Experts; the regular offices and anterooms, lay this curious honeycomb of chambers and cells wherein the true nature of INTREX was ever working. Wheels of counter-espionage and security smoothly turning.

“Anytime you’re ready,” Miss Follet said into a tiny phone next to her chair.

The little theatre went dark. Seven and Farmer waited in their seats. A spray of orange light arched over their heads, finding a white screen. The film began to come alive. Frames flickered, then settled down to normal running speed. The valuable footage that Paul Baroda and Peter Foreman had worked so hard to get unfolded.

It was deadly material. In the wrong hands, it could have shaken the earth. The missile sites, the launching pads, the highly advanced stages of the weapons revealed on the screen was awesome. Neither Seven nor Farmer smoked, caught up in the wonder of the tiny roll of microfilm.

The film closed, no more than five minutes of material, and the cell’s light came up. Miss Follet regarded the tips of her fingernails, which like the rest of her, were shapely and even.

“You see,” she said slowly. “Real hot stuff. The hottest.”

“Amen,” Seven said.

“Heap bad medicine,” Farmer said in a low voice that wasn’t asking anybody to laugh at his analogy.

Further down the hall, not too far away, in their respective prisons, Baroda and Foreman were feverishly plotting an escape. But it seemed hopeless. All their personal possessions, all metal objects and shoelaces and buckles, had been removed from their persons. Two master spies, not mere hirelings, were suddenly faced with the extraordinary truth that they were in the hands of INTREX. That faceless organization whose reputation had already become a byword on the continent.

INTREX.

How could one fight these damn American capitalists with their millions and billions in oil, steel and diamonds and gold? Their worship of the God Baal and the golden calf had given them the fortunes to squander on the fight against the Isms. All the Isms in the universe.

Baroda and Foreman shuddered.

Money, on the side of the angels, was a most formidable weapon. Stronger and greater than all the sciences in mankind’s book of dreams.

“Good day, gentlemen,” Miss Follet said, at the door of her office, to David and Miles. “You may return to your duties.”

It was a candle-lit dinner for two. The food was good, the wine excellent, the company superlative. David Seven smiled fondly across the crowded tablecloth at Cathy Darrow. The candlelight set up golden lights in her blonde hair.

“Good to see you again, Miss Darrow.”

“Likewise, Mr. Seven.”

“I was very busy while you were gone. I never realized how much a man can depend on a good secretary.”

“Lots of extra-legal work again, David?” Cathy sighed.

He toyed with a breads tick and aimed it at her as if it was a pistol. “You know me — the D’Artagnan of the courtroom. Clients are always getting into trouble.”

“I don’t mean that. You’re a puzzle you know. Bright young lawyer. Working for a big important outfit like International Trade Experts. And yet — I don’t know—”

“Go on,” he urged.

“Well, you’re out of the office more often than you’re in it. Forever running off some place. And usually with Miles Farmer. And he’s an architect. It just doesn’t make sense.”

Seven chuckled. “I catch them and Miles builds the jails that hold them. That makes sense, doesn’t it?”

“You’re being evasive, David. Just as always. Just as you are when I try to tie apron strings around you.”

“It’s a wise bachelor who knows when to run,” Seven said with deep wisdom.

“And Miss Follet,” Cathy murmured. “A woman with all she has. Why she ought to be in the movies — or way uptown like Joan Crawford with Pepsi-Cola.”

“Why, Miss Darrow. You shock me. Suppose Sam heard you talking like that? Are you trying to say that we at International are not all we seem to be? Tsk, tsk. That won’t do, my girl.”

“Don’t call her Sam. She’d skin you alive if she ever heard you call her that and you know it.”

“Sad but true. All right, Miss Darrow, we are all spies. We work for the government and we are out to keep the bad guys from over-running the world. Okay?”

“David, be serious!”

“I am serious.”

“Oh — you. Forget it. I’ll mind my own business.” She changed the subject, looking at the menu again. “What are you having for dessert? The pineapple pudding is a specialty here—”

“Pineapple pudding sounds scrumptious,” he laughed, staring into her eyes across the blaze of the candles. “And you look the same way too.”

So, once again, Cathy Darrow’s suspicions were allayed and David Seven’s cover was preserved.

After all, INTREX needed him even more than Cathy Darrow did.

Dedicated men are not that easy to come by.