“‘Disappeared!’ Kidnapped, you mean!”

“Softly, Jill. ‘Kidnapped’ is a dirty word.”

“It’s the only word for it! Jubal, how can you sit there and do nothing when you ought to be shouting it from the—”

“Stop it, Jill! There’s another word. Instead of kidnapped, he might be dead.”

Gillian slumped. “Yes,” she agreed dully. “That’s what I’m really afraid of.”

“So am I. But we’ll assume he is not, until we have seen his bones. But it’s one or the other—so we assume that he is kidnapped. Jill, what’s the greatest danger about kidnapping? No, don’t bother your pretty head; I’ll tell you. The greatest danger to the victim is a hue-and-cry—because if a kidnapper is frightened, he will almost always kill his victim. Had you thought of that?”

Gillian looked woeful and did not answer. Harshaw went on gently, “I am forced to say that I think it is extremely likely that Ben is dead. He has been gone too long. But we’ve agreed to assume that he is alive—until we know otherwise. Now you intend to look for him. Gillian, can you tell me how you will go about this? Without increasing the risk that Ben will be done away with by the unknown party or parties who kidnapped him?”

“Uh—But we know who they are!”

“Do we?”

“Of course we do! The same people who were keeping Mike a prisoner—the government!”

Harshaw shook his head. “We don’t know it. That’s an assumption based on what Ben was doing when last seen. But it’s not a certainty. Ben has made lots of enemies with his column and by no means all of them are in the government. I can think of several who would willingly kill him if they could get away with it. However—” Harshaw frowned. “Your assumption is all we have to go on. But not ‘the government’—that’s too sweeping a term. ‘The government’ is several million people, nearly a million in Washington alone. We have to ask ourselves: Whose toes were being stepped on? What person or persons? Not ‘the government’—but what individuals?”

“Why, that’s plain enough, Jubal. I told you, just as Ben told it to me. It’s the Secretary General himself.”

“No,” Harshaw denied. “While that may be true, it’s not useful to us. No matter who did what, if it is anything rough or illegal, it won’t be the Secretary General who did it, even if he benefits by it. Nobody would ever be able to prove that he even knew about it. It is likely that he would not know about it—not the rough stuff. No, Jill, we need to find out which lieutenant in the Secretary General’s large staff of stooges handled this operation. But that isn’t as hopeless as it sounds—I think. When Ben was taken in to see that phony ‘Man from Mars,’ one of Mr. Douglas’s executive assistants was with him—tried to talk him out of it, then went with him. It now appears that this same top-level stooge also dropped out of sight last Thursday . . . and I don’t think it is a coincidence, not when he appears to have been in charge of the phony ‘Man from Mars.’ If we find him, we may find Ben. Gilbert Berquist is his name and I have reason—”

“Berquist?”

“That’s the name. And I have reason to suspect that—Jill, what’s the trouble? Stop it! Don’t faint, or swelp me, I’ll dunk you in the pool!”

“Jubal. This ‘Berquist.’ Is there more than one Berquist?”

“Eh? I suppose so . . . though from all I can find out he does seem to be a bit of a bastard; there might be only one. But I mean the one on the Executive staff. Why? Do you know him?”

“I don’t know. But if it is the same one . . . I don’t think there’s any use looking for him.”

“Mmm . . . talk, girl.”

“Jubal . . . I’m sorry—I’m terribly sorry—but I didn’t tell you quite everything.”

“People rarely do. All right, out with it.”

Stumbling, stuttering, and stammering, Gillian managed to tell about the two men who suddenly were not there. Jubal simply listened. “And that’s all,” she concluded sadly. “I screamed and scared Mike . . . and he went into that trance you saw him in—and then I had a simply terrible time getting here. But I told you about that.”

“Mmm . . . yes, so you did. I wish that you had told me about this, too.”

She turned red. “I didn’t think anybody would believe me. And I was scared. Jubal, can they do anything to us?”

“Eh?” Jubal seemed surprised. “Do what?”