before it for a long, agonizing moment, waiting for
the right person to pass. Finally, the man he needed came along.
About six feet tall, about a hundred and eighty; dressed in the local
native dress and on the ragged side.

Homer said to him authoritatively, in the Wolof tongue, "You there,
come in here!" He opened the door, and pointed into the office.

The other, taken aback, demurred.

Homer's face and tone went still more commanding. "Step in here,
before I call the police."

It was all a mistake, of course. The Senegalese made the gesture
equivalent to the European's shrug, and entered the office.

Homer came in behind him, closed the door. He wasted no time in
preliminaries. Before the native turned, the American's hand lashed
out in a karate blow which stunned the other. Homer Crawford caught
him, even as he fell, and lowered him gently to the floor.

"Sorry, old boy," he muttered, "but this is probably the most
profitable thing that's happened to you this year."

He stripped off the other's clothes, as rapidly as he could make his
hands fly. The other was still out and probably would be for another
ten minutes, Crawford estimated. He stripped off his own clothes and
donned the native's.

Last of all, he took his wallet from his pocket, divided the money it
contained and stuffed a considerable wad of it into the European
clothing he was abandoning.

"Don't spend all of that in one place," he growled softly.

Homer dragged the other to a side of the room so that the body could
not be spotted from the entrance. Then he crossed to the door, opened
it and stepped into the corridor beyond.

* * * * *

There was no need for sulking. He walked out the front door and headed
away from the dock and administration buildings area and toward the
native section, passing the Reunited Nations building on the way.

Dakar teems with multitudes of a dozen tribes come in from the jungles
and the bush, the desert and the swamp areas of the sources of the
Niger, to look for work on the new projects, to visit relatives, to
market for the products of civilization--or to gawk. Homer Crawford
disappeared into them. One among many.

Toward noon, he entered the cleared area which was the restaurant he
had named to Isobel and squatted before the pots to the far end of the
Vietnamese owned eatery, examining them with care. He chose a large
chunk of barbequed goat and was served it with a half