;
she came into the office--"

Cardon felt his face tighten into a frown of perplexity. That wasn't
like Literate First Class Stephen S. Bayne. He made quite a hobby of
pinching salesgirls behind the counter which was one thing; the boss'
daughter was quite another.

"Where's Latterman?" he asked, looking around.

"Down in the office, with the others, trying to help Mr. Pelton. He's
had another of those heart attacks--"

Cardon swore and ran for the descending escalator, running down the
rotating spiral to the executive floor and jumping off into the
gawking mob of Illiterate clerks crowded in the open doors of Pelton's
office. He hit and shoved and elbowed and cursed them out of the way,
and burst into the big room beyond, and then, for a moment, he was
almost sorry he had come.

Pelton was slumped in his big relaxer chair, his face pale and twisted
in pain, his breath coming in feeble gasps. His daughter was beside
him, her blond head bent over him; Russell Latterman was standing to
one side, watching intently. For an instant, Cardon was reminded of a
tomcat watching a promising mouse hole.

"Claire!" Cardon exploded, "give him a nitrocaine bulb. Why are you
all just standing around?"

Claire turned. "There are none," she said, looking at him with
desperate eyes. "The box is empty; he must have used them all."

He shot a quick glance at Latterman, catching the sales manager before
he could erase a look of triumph from his face. Things began to add
up. Latterman, of course, was the undercover man for Wilton Joyner and
Harvey Graves and the rest of the Conservative faction at Literates'
Hall, just as he, himself, was Lancedale's agent. Obsessed with
immediate advantages and disadvantages, the Joyner-Graves faction
wanted to secure the re-election of Grant Hamilton, and the way things
had been going in the past two months, only Chester Pelton's death
could accomplish that. Latterman had probably thrown out Pelton's
nitrocaine capsules and then put Bayne up to insulting Pelton's
daughter, knowing that a fit of rage would bring on another heart
attack, which could be fatal without the medicine.

"Well, send for more!"

"The prescription's in the safe," she said faintly.

The office safe was locked, and only a Literate could open it. The
double combination was neatly stenciled on the door, the numbers
spelled out as words and the letters spelled in phonetic equivalents.
All three of them--himself, Claire, and