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friend! It is something of incredible! I am walking along the corridor when I hear a noise coming from the baggage room. Aha, I say, what is it that is there? Is somebody after my beautiful samples? I push the door. Achoo! It opens, though it should at all times be locked except when the steward or one of the officers is there. I reach inside to put on the lights. What happens? I am seized and drawn in, and pepper is thrown in my face. The intruder, he rushes past me and out. Fortunately the door cannot be locked from the inside or I should be there yet. Achoo!”
    “Who was it?” said Chapman.
    “I don’t know, so quickly did the fripon move. For a moment I suspected even you. But that would be absurd; one agent of a great couturière to play such a trick on another? Then I thought maybe our friend Fiasakhe might have some fanatical idea that the custom of wearing clothes was indecent, and wished to prevent us from introducing it to his planet. But no, I am sure the hand that grasped my arm was that of a man, not an Osirian. Have you any ideas?”
    Chapman asked innocently: “Is your model, Mademoiselle Savinkov, trustworthy?”
    “That little one? I think that yes. Here, let us repair the ravages of time and misfortune.” Bergerat brought out a silver flask with two small cups screwed over the outlet. “Good cognac.”
    Chapman sniffed suspiciously at his thimbleful of brandy and held it in his hand until Bergerat drank his. Then Chapman drank too.
    “Let us go over the passenger list,” said Bergerat. “This Madame Barros, now, she is en route to join her husband, so I think she is kosher. Mr. William Chisholm: do you know anything of him?”
    “Only what he’s told us. He’s some kind of professor . . .”
    Chapman, sitting on the edge of Mpande’s bunk, swayed. Then, before he even realized what was happening, he lost consciousness.

    ###

    Cato Chapman awakened with a headache and a foul taste in his mouth. He moved a little experimentally, groaned, and sat up to hold his head.
    “I say, are you all right, old thing?” said Mpande, sticking his head out from the bottom bunk. “I came in some hours ago, and found you stretched out on your bunk with your togs on.”
    “Guess I’ll live, thanks,” muttered Chapman. His watch told him it was nearly breakfast time.
    He got up and shaved. Then, as soon as Mpande left, Chapman leaped to his trunk. Finding it still locked, he hoped for a moment it had not been tampered with. When he got it open, however, the gorgeous raiment within was a slimy mess. Some of the garments were full of holes; others were partly dissolved into a kind of slush; others were whole but violently discolored.
    He pulled himself together and pressed the intercom button in the bulkhead. “Miss Zorn, please . . . Celia, this is Gato. Will you step over to my cabin, quick?”
    When she saw the mess she clutched her head and moaned: “Cato! How perfectly ghastly! How did that happen?”
    Chapman poked among the ruins and came up with a couple of slivers of thin glass. “See this cut on the outside?” He pointed to a semicircular gash that had been cut or burned in the metal of the trunk, and the resulting flap lifted up and pushed down again.
    “It’s Bergerat, of course. I thought that ring of his looked too big to be just an ornament. It’s an energy cutter. He knocked me out with that drink—God knows how—cut the trunk open, and stuck in an acid bomb. They’re cute little things, used in strikes in the cleaning business. There’s a plastic covering about the size of an egg, and inside that a thin glass container with the acid and a sliding weight. You tap them hard on something and the weight breaks the glass and the acid dissolves the plastic.”
    While they examined the ruined samples he told her of his earlier encounter with Bergerat in the baggage room.
    She said: “He knew it was you, and decided to get even.”
    “For what? I hadn’t hurt his damned trunk . .