He didn't know. I pressed a panel. A stairway was revealed. I took him down to the basement.

It was a whole hospital complex in itself. It had innumerable private rooms as well.

He was amazed. "What's this? A secret hospital under a hospital!"

"Precisely," I said. And I told him about the master plan of changing the identity of wanted men and gangsters.

"They look like prison cells," he said.

"That's to make them feel at home," I said. "Can you do it?"

"Oh, no difficulty with that. It's just that the upstairs hospital should run, too."

"That's for cover," I said.

"That still doesn't solve the storage space, Officer Gris. Nor the refrigeration. It will be all the more necessary because of the increased cultures I will have to make, changing fingerprints and larynxes and so on."

I could see he was being mulish. We went back upstairs to where he had established his office. And a nice office it was. The phone was in and connected. I phoned Mudlick Construction Company and was shortly talking to the contractor.

"I think we had a financial transaction that was not complete," I said.

"There was a cost overrun," he said. "I will need a huge storage addition and a refrigeration building," I said.

"There was no cost overrun," he said, "if it comes to another half a million U.S."

My Gods, this hospital was expensive! "Same terms," I said. "Same terms," he said.

"Make the plans with the man in charge," I said, "and get started on it." "You're rich," he said.

"You better not get too rich," I said. "There's an awful lot of mud around here." I hung up. But oh, well—charity hospitals had their good points. My rip-off would now be half a million, U.S.

I got ready to leave. My nose was still hurting. "Just tell the Mudlick people what you want when they come and get them started on it. I've got other things to do." Prahd was making no effort to get up. "Don't you want to hear the news from Voltar?" he said. "I know how you have the welfare of your country at heart." People will be chatty and social. I sat back down. "Everything on Voltar is fine," said Prahd. "The weather was nice. All the flowering shrubs were doing beautifully." I knew he was talking about the Widow Tayl's place. I was wary.

"You know that I had some work going on the Widow Tayl," he said. "I'm sure you'll be happy to know it was all concluded successfully before the Blixo left."

It was more suspicion than interest that prompted me to ask, "What work was that?"

"I knew your interest in her place and your obvious concern about her. So I did exactly what you would have wanted me to do, Officer Gris. The problem was nymphomania—an obsession with sex."

Oh Gods, was he ever right!

"So I enlarged her ovaries, as a beginning. She can now have three times as many orgasms as before and much more strongly."

Devils! No man in Pausch Hills would be safe! Thank Heavens I was down here on Earth! But wait, he had used the word beginning. "You did more?"

"Why, of course. As you are part of the famous Gyrant Slahb family, I did not want to be remiss in my professional activities in your employ."

I waited with my eyes getting narrower. Suspicion is a built-in fact in the Apparatus.

"Nymphomania," he said learnedly, "is often caused by sterility. So I checked and, sure enough, there was an ovulation blockage—the ovum could not come down to be fertilized. So I removed the blockage."

Aha. Maybe he had handled the situation. If the Widow Tayl started having babies, maybe it would slow her down.

Prahd was smiling happily, the true professional. "Well, remember the first day I had the honor of meeting you? You had intercourse with her in the house? Well, I took some of your semen..."

"Wait!" I said in sudden alarm, "You'd been having intercourse with her for a day and a half! How do you know it wasn't yours?"

"Oh," he said, waving it away, "it's against the ethics of the profession to use my own." He gave a pitying, professional smile. "What cellologist does not know his own sperm configuration? Easy to tell. Anyway, she was ready to ovulate, even if blocked, so I put one of her ova in a test tube with one of your sperm. And here is the good news: they 'took' very successfully. And so just before I left, I made sure there was nothing else in her womb and I inserted the established embryo."

Horror was going through me in waves. The Widow Tayl! "Does she know whose it is?" I said with dimming hope.

"Oh, yes! She said that as long as it couldn't be Heller's, yours would have to do. She was very happy about it, really. She will be seven weeks along by now. It will be a boy."

I had gone through horror and was into savageness.

"I was so appreciative for all you had done for me," said Prahd, "that I did it all for you. And imagine! It will carry along the line of your great uncle, Gyrant Slahb! It will have the blood of the most famous cellologist on Voltar! Doesn't that make you proud?"

My fists were clenched. "You can't make this stick! There's no evidence I'm the father!"

"Oh, yes," said Prahd. "I filed the medical parental certificate with the authorities. Have no fear you'll lose it. I made very sure you could claim the parentage."

Oh, Gods and Devils! This fellow was a fiend! I surged up. "Why have you done this?"

At last he was intimidated. He began to stammer. "All... all... all r... r... right. There was another reason. Y... y... you said you were going to burn down that b...b...b... beautiful estate! I couldn't bear the... the ... the thought of it. So I knew... knew that if you knew... knew you had a son there, you would not burn it down!"

I slumped back down into the chair. Oh Gods, Devils and Hells. Here he had tied me to the worst nympho on Voltar! Maybe, if she pressed the demand, I would even have to marry her!

Prahd recovered somewhat. "It has its good side. It is a beautiful estate. And she sent you a card."

He reached into his pocket and pulled it out. On one side it had a statue of a naked nymph leering at the viewer while hiding her nakedness in such a way that it was flagrantly displayed. On the other side there was a scrawl. It said:

To Soltan,

Yoo-hoo, wherever you are. I'm just coming great! It's just coming great. Will you be coming soon? I hope so.

Your cuddly Taylsy-Waylsy

Ooooooh

I went home.

I lay down in my bed and wept. It was too bad Prahd was officially dead. Otherwise, I could have killed him on the spot.

Fate didn't have me on rations that day. It was being very liberal. It was even insisting on me taking all the bad luck I could hold and then some.

Midafternoon, Karagoz came into my bedroom. It seems when there is bad news, he brings it. When it is good news he doesn't even send anybody with it.

"There's a horrible-looking man out on the lawn," he said.

I got up. You can't hide a weapon in a sweater– besides, it was muddy. I changed to a windbreaker and put a Colt Cobra in my pocket. Watchfully, I went out.

It was Jimmy "The Gutter" Tavilnasty. He was playing mumbletypeg with a stiletto.

He turned his pockmarked face to me. He looked at me with his beady black eyes. He said, "You got my man?"

"No gun play around here!" I said in alarm.

He juggled the stiletto. "I never use guns. Why do you think they call me 'The Gutter'?"

He looked all around to make sure we weren't being overheard. He seemed to talk mainly out of the side of his mouth. "I got the guys you want right here." He tapped his pocket. "When you finger my man, you get these."

The candidates for altered identities! With us paying the local doctors to work and telling the world it was all free, this new income was not just good. It was vital!

"You come back in a little while," I said.