"Bring him here at once. And if you catch him at home, slap a seal on his door. He may be in possession of some very important secret documents."
"And get hold of the doorsmith who repaired my office door; I want the lock calibration changed at once."
The screen faded. Walton turned back to his desk and busied himself in meaningless paper work, trying to keep himself from thinking.
A few moments later the screen brightened again. It was Fred.
Walton stared coldly at his brother's image. "Well?"
Fred chuckled. "Why so pale and wan, dear brother? Disappointed in love?"
"An audience with His Highness the Interim Director, if it please His Grace." Fred grinned unpleasantly. "A private, audience, if you please, m'lord."
Fred shook his head. "Sorry, no go. There are too many tricky spy pickups in that office of yours. Let's meet elsewhere, shall we?"
"That club you belong to. The Bronze Room."
Walton sputtered. "But I can't leave the building now! There's no one who--"
"Now," Fred interrupted. "The Bronze Room. It's in the San Isidro, isn't it? Top of Neville Prospect?"
"All right," said Walton resignedly. "There's a doorsmith coming up here to do some work. Give me a minute to cancel the assignment and I'll meet you downstairs."
"You leave now," Fred said. "I'll arrive five minutes after you. And you won't need to cancel anything. _I_ was the doorsmith."
Neville Prospect was the most fashionable avenue in all of New York City, a wide strip of ferroconcrete running up the West Side between Eleventh Avenue and the West Side Drive from Fortieth to Fiftieth Street. It was bordered on both sides by looming apartment buildings in which a man of wealth might have as many as four or five rooms to his suite; and at the very head of the Prospect, facing down-town, was the mighty San Isidro, a buttressed fortress of gleaming metal and stone whose mighty, beryllium-steel supports swept out in a massive arc five hundred feet in either direction.
On the hundred fiftieth floor of the San Isidro was the exclusive Bronze Room, from whose quartz windows might be seen all the sprawling busyness of Manhattan and the close-packed confusion of New Jersey just across the river.
The jetcopter delivered Walton to the landing-stage of the Bronze Room; he tipped the man too much and stepped within. A door of dull bronze confronted him. He touched his key to the signet plate; the door pivoted noiselessly inward, admitting him.