h. Below this was a small dial with the legend _Element of
Probability_ lettered on it.

Sutter was about to switch on the set when the door buzzer sounded. He
crossed to the door and pulled it open.

A tall gangly man stood there. Swarthy, face partially covered by a
neatly trimmed beard, he looked the conventional picture of a story-book
villain. He wore a broad-brimmed hat and an under-slung pipe was clamped
in his teeth. He said in a deep booming voice, "Are you Mr. Martin
Sutter?"

"Yes, I am. What can I do for you?"

The man said his name was Lucien Travail. He explained that he had been
looking for a room and that Mrs. Conworth, the landlady, had informed
him she had no vacancies but suggested that her roomer, Mr. Sutter,
might be interested in a roommate.

"Of course I realize you don't know me but I believe our strangeness
will be offset by our mutual hobby."

Sutter was silent, waiting for him to continue.

"I collect shells," Travail said.

For thirty years Sutter had pursued a hobby which had begun in his
boyhood days during summer vacations at the seashore--the collecting of
exoskeletons of mollusks and crustaceans. Long ago his assortment of
cowries, spiny combs and yellow dragon-castles had outgrown their glass
cabinet and overflowed into three carefully catalogued packing cases.

To Sutter, anyone who liked shells was a person above suspicion. Thus it
was that two days later, after a casual checking of the bearded man's
references, he invited Travail to move in with him.

During those two days Sutter tried unsuccessfully to put his new
television set into operation. But the set refused to work. Turn the
queer dials as he would, all he could get on the elliptical screen was a
blur of blinding colors.

On the evening of the third day Travail looked up from his newspaper,
said, "It says here that the president of the Federal Union Congress is
going to make a speech in New Paris. Will you tune him in?"

Sutter frowned. "I would," he said, "but my set is out of order. I
should call a repair man, but I had hoped to get it regulated myself."

Travail laid down his pipe. "Out of order, eh?" he said. "I'm sort of
handy with gadgets. Let me take a look at it."

He walked across to the cabinet, turned it around and stood peering at
the complicated chassis. A small brass nameplate caught his eye:
_Manufactured by the Tanganyika Company, Dodoma, Empire of Tanganyika,
East Africa. Under charter of the