Project Gutenberg's What The Left Hand Was Doing, by Gordon Randall Garrett

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Title: What The Left Hand Was Doing

Author: Gordon Randall Garrett

Release Date: April 25, 2008 [EBook #25166]
Last updated: January 31, 2009

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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WHAT THE LEFT HAND ... WAS DOING

By DARRELL T. LANGART

Illustrated by Freas

_There is no lie so totally convincing as something the other
fellow already knows-for-sure is the truth. And no cover-story so
convincing...._

[Illustration]

The building itself was unprepossessive enough. It was an old-fashioned,
six-floor, brick structure that had, over the years, served first as a
private home, then as an apartment building, and finally as the
headquarters for the organization it presently housed.

It stood among others of its kind in a lower-middle-class district of
Arlington, Virginia, within howitzer range of the capitol of the United
States, and even closer to the Pentagon. The main door was five steps up
from the sidewalk, and the steps were flanked by curving balustrades of
ornamental ironwork. The entrance itself was closed by a double door
with glass panes, beyond which could be seen a small foyer. On both
doors, an identical message was blocked out in neat gold letters: _The
Society For Mystical and Metaphysical Research, Inc._

It is possible that no more nearly perfect cover, no more misleading
front for a secret organization ever existed in the history of man. It
possessed two qualities which most other cover-up titles do not have.
One, it was so obviously crackpot that no one paid any attention to it
except crackpots, and, two, it was perfectly, literally true.

Spencer Candron had seen the building so often that the functional
beauty of the whole setup no longer impressed him as it had several
years before. Just as a professional actor is not impressed by being
allowed backstage, or as a multimillionaire considers expensive luxuries
as