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today.”
    “Don’t leave there, Lockwood! You find that ‘device’ or find some reason for Transatlantic not to pay, you hear? Take a week
     if you need to, but find it, you hear me?”
    Lockwood held the receiver a foot from his ear. He sighed. “Yes, sir, I hear you fine.”
    Pops Tibbett, the night watchman, had not gone home yet. He looked calm for a man whose charge had slipped away the night
     before. When Lockwood entered the spare office, the white-haired man rose and stood straight for a man over seventy. The German
     shepherd at his side panted deeply and watched Lockwood as he asked Pop questions.
    “I made my rounds just like I always do,” Pops answered. Lockwood jotted down the times of his rounds without telling him
     when the truck had left last night. According to the Detex system, Pops had been on this floor at 1:46, just thirty-three
     minutes before the two-ton truck had gone through the gate. When Pops had come back to Area C after forty minutes, the usual
     length of his round, he had seen nothing.
    “Bingo did whine and bark, and I let him sniff all around this room,” the old man said, his watery eyes looking as if they
     might fill with tears, “but he didn’t see nobody.”
    “Where do you leave your keys when you’re off duty?”
    “With Miss Myra or Mr. Greer,” he said. “I told them the first day I come here I didn’t want to take them home. Just in case
     something like this happened.”
    Myra came in then and told Lockwood the G-men had arrived, and would Lockwood come back to Dr. Dzeloski’s office?
    “Miss Myra,” Pops called after her. She stopped and turned. “I’m not going to lose my job, am I? I really need this job, and
     I didn’t see or hear nothing last night. I’d have shot the crooks if I had.” He pulled his old pistol out and waved it around,
     alarming Lockwood. The barrel pointed in the direction of Lockwood’s feet, and he backed up a couple of steps.
    “I don’t think so, Pops,” she said, and she stepped forward to put her hand on his arm. “Sounds to me like you did your job.”
    “I did, Miss Myra, I did.”
    Lockwood didn’t buy the old man’s performance. Actually he wasn’t buying any of their performances. He had seen too many cases
     like this. Myra, Stanley Greer, Pops, the gate guard, the engineers, Dzeloski himself—people had a thousand reasons for cheating
     the insurance company, and his job was to find the one—if any—that applied here. As they went downstairs, Lockwood asked,
     “Has he been with you long?”
    “He was a machinist till two years ago, and we made him night watchman when he reached seventy. He’s been with Josef since
     he first went in business—I think he came with the original factory in Queens—”
    Josef Dzeloski’s outer office held six bland young men whom Lockwood spotted at once as Feds. In Dzeloski’s office itself
     another two slightly older young men who also looked like Feds rose to meet him. Lockwood could feel the antagonism emanating
     from them like heat from an oven.
    One was Guy Manners, a forty-year-old troubleshooter from the Treasury Department, and the other was a special agent from
     military intelligence, George Porta.
    Manners said at once, “Mr. Lockwood, I know you have good reasons to look into this matter, but this is something I don’t
     think either the Treasury or the Army Air Corps can give you permission to investigate.”
    “Hey, terrific,” Lockwood said. He put on his hat. “Mr. Dzeloski, thanks for—”
    “Wait a minute,” Dr. Dzeloski said, stopping him. “You’re going to pay off, right?”
    “Sir, we can’t if we can’t investigate,” Lockwood said. “If you’ll look at the policy, you’ll see we have the right to conduct
     a full investigation when a claim’s made. If we don’t get full cooperation, we have the right not to pay.” Lockwood grinned
     to show his threats were all part of the game. “Believe me, my boss will be delighted to