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knowledge of German small arms technology. We thought you might provide some insight as to what pressures their industrial nut was undergoing. Insteadyou check in with a rather odd tale out of James Hadley Chase. Very disappointing.”
    And he was dismissed.
    But Leets let his enthusiasm get the best of him. In a frenzy of zeal, he dashed off a batch of memos one afternoon to various bodies whose support he hoped to enlist in his crusade—SHAEF, CIC, Army Intelligence, the OSS counterintelligence outfit called X-2, OSS German Desk over at Grosvenor Square, and so forth. The results were depressing.
    “It’s ’cause I don’t know anybody. They’re all buddy-buddy, Eastern. Clubby. Harvard-Oxford-Yale,” he claimed.
    Rog, old Harvard man at nineteen, tried to dissuade him from this concept.
    “It’s not
like
that up at Harvard, Captain. It’s just a bunch of guys having a good time, like anywhere. Reason you’re not getting anywhere is simply that the clowns running the show don’t know what they’re doing, no matter what school they went to. This war’s the best thing they’ve got going; it sure beats working for a living. Once it’s over, they’re back jerking sodas.” Rog spoke with the brilliant assurance of a man who’d never jerk a soda in his life. His education entitled him to sit in the office with his paratroop boots on the table and dispense homilies of sociology to Leets.
    “Aren’t you supposed to be
doing
something?” Leets said.
    Airily, Roger continued with his analysis, now reaching cross-discipline into psychology. “I know what’s eating you, Jim. You want back in it.” He was genuinelyamazed at this. “Boy, between us we got this war
solved
. Now why you’d want to—”
    Leets knew in many ways he baffled the young tennis player. He of late had been baffling himself. Now why, all of a sudden, was he off on a crusade? Upstairs had said No; then No it would be.
    But Leets kept thinking: Yes. It’s got to be Yes.
    Several days later, Leets appeared at Tony’s office.
    “Back again?” Tony asked.
    “Yes,” Leets replied, unsmilingly.
    “And so soon.”
    “I was trying to sell it around town. No takers.”
    “No. Thought not. Simply won’t wash, is why. Surely you can see that. No convincing dope.”
    Leets concentrated on remaining pleasant. He explained politely, “The reason there’s no convincing dope is that I can’t get any. I can’t get any because the word’s out.”
    “Whatever can you mean?”
    Leets explained as if to a schoolboy: “Someone’s stamped me ‘Crank,’ ‘Nut.’ I dropped in on some of the other sections, thinking maybe I could round up some help, and suddenly I’m getting pitched in the street. You can tell from the way they look at you and whisper. You’re out, you’re dead.”
    “I’m sure,” Tony said primly, “you exaggerate.”
    “I figure it was you
put
the word out. Sir.”
    Tony did not look away. There was not a fiber in his body capable of showing embarrassment. He looked at Leets evenly, his gaze richly amused, and said, “I’ll allow that’s a possibility. Even a probability.”
    “I thought so,” said Leets.
    “Nothing personal. I’m quite fond of you. You’re my favorite American. Unlike most of them, you are not madly obsessed with yourself. You do not tell me stories of growing up on a farm in Kansas and the name of your wife and children. Still, there are limits.”
    “Major Outhwaithe.”
    “Please. Tony is fine.”
    “Major Outhwaithe, I’m asking you to take me out of the freezer.”
    “Absolutely not.” He gazed calmly at him. Pity registered in his eyes; he was about to reveal a Major Truth, some elemental rule of the game that the thick Yank hadn’t caught on to. “Because you’ve got a
real
job to do. I know, I gave it to you. I’m responsible for it. I am exec officer of this little clown show JAATIC; directly under which is
your
little clown show, SWET. Not everybody can have a big job in