Quinlan?"

"Yes, sir."

"May I see your identification?"

I handed him my wallet. He flipped through the panels holding my press
pass, social security card, driver's license and a picture of Lois in
a bathing suit. When he failed to do more than give the latter a
casual glance I knew this was a man with a troubled mind.

I said, "Maybe you could give me kind of a hint on what's going on."

"Going on?" he repeated absently.

"You know--going on." I got off a nonchalant-type laugh that would
have fooled anybody who was deaf. "I even heard that the President
wanted to see me!"

He gave me back the wallet. "Ah--yes. Come with me, please."

We left the office and went down a hall, around some corners and down
more halls, past a lot of doors, all of them closed. Finally he
stopped in front of a pair of doors with shiny brass doorknobs,
knocked twice, then turned the knob, said, "Mr. Quinlan, gentlemen,"
shoved me through with a jerk of his chin, and closed the door behind
me.

I never saw him again.

There was a long table down the center of a long narrow room. The
woodwork was white and the walls papered a dark green, with
walnut-framed pictures here and there of the kind of men you see in
albums of Civil War vintage.

But the men around the table were as modern as a jet bomber. There
were five of them, three of whom I recognized on sight: Army Chief of
Staff General Lucius Ohlmsted, Secretary of War Franklin McClave, and,
seated at the far end of the table and looking even younger than his
forty-nine years, the President of the United States.

The remaining two were just a couple of men to me: dark business
suits, clean collars, manicured fingernails and the type of faces you
see twenty of on any city block.

* * * * *

I walked on down the room, feeling as conspicuous as a cheer leader at
a wake, while five pairs of eyes sorted me over molecule by molecule.
When I reached the near end of the table, I stopped, resisted an
impulse to salute, and stood there at attention.

The President managed to keep from smiling, although you could see he
wasn't far from it. "Thanks for coming here so promptly, Mr. Quinlan.
I'd like you to meet my associates."

He reeled off names and titles. The two strangers were a Mr. Proudfit
and a Mr. Kramer, occupations not disclosed. Kramer was small and
ageless, with a weather-beaten face and a mouth like a steel trap;
while Mr. Proudfit had the