The Project Gutenberg EBook of Ham Sandwich, by James H. Schmitz

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Title: Ham Sandwich

Author: James H. Schmitz

Illustrator: Leo Summers

Release Date: December 26, 2009 [EBook #30764]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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Transcriber's Note:

This etext was produced from Analog Science Fact & Fiction June 1963.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S.
copyright on this publication was renewed.

HAM SANDWICH

It gets difficult to handle the
problem of a man who has a real talent
that you need badly--and he cannot
use it if he knows it's honest!

by JAMES H. SCHMITZ

ILLUSTRATED BY LEO SUMMERS

* * * * *

There was no one standing or sitting around the tastefully furnished
entry hall of the Institute of Insight when Wallace Cavender walked
into it. He was almost half an hour late for the regular Sunday night
meeting of advanced students; and even Mavis Greenfield, Dr. Ormond's
secretary, who always stayed for a while at her desk in the hall to
sign in the stragglers, had disappeared. However, she had left the
attendance book lying open on the desk with a pen placed invitingly
beside it.

Wallace Cavender dutifully entered his name in the book. The distant
deep voice of Dr. Aloys Ormond was dimly audible, coming from the
direction of the lecture room, and Cavender followed its faint
reverberations down a narrow corridor until he reached a closed door.
He eased the door open and slipped unobtrusively into the back of the
lecture room.

As usual, most of the thirty-odd advanced students present had seated
themselves on the right side of the room where they were somewhat
closer to the speaker. Cavender started towards the almost vacant rows
of chairs on the left, smiling apologetically at Dr. Ormond who, as
the