Weinbaum nodded. “Without a doubtbut he shows no signs of being bothered by it. He can’t have sent any tips to Erskine recently, for instance, because our last tangle with that crew came out very well for us, even though we had to use the Dirac to send the orders to our squadron out there.
If he overheard us, he didn’t even try to pass the word. Just as he said, he’s sweating us out” Weinbaum paused. “Wait a minute, here comes Margaret. And by the length of her stride, I’d say she’s got something particularly nasty on her mind.”
“You bet I do,” Margaret Soames said vindictively. “And it’ll blow plenty of lids around here, or I miss my guess. The 1. D. squad has finally pinned down J. Shelby Stevens. They did it with the voice-comparator alone.”
“How does that work?” Wald said interestedly.
“Blink microphone,” Weinbaum said impatiently. “Isolates inflections on single, normally stressed syllables and matches them. Standard 1. D. searching technique, on a case of this kind, but it takes so long that we usually get the quarry by other means before it pays off. Well, don’t stand there like a dummy, Margaret. Who is he?
” ‘He,’ ” Margaret said, “is your sweetheart of the video waves, Miss Dana Lje.”
“They’re crazy!” Wald said, staring at her.
Weinbaum came slowly out of his first shock of stunned disbelief. “No, Thor,” he said finally. “No, it figures. If a woman is going to go in for disguises, there are always two she can assume outside her own sex: a young boy, and a very old man. And Dana’s an actress; that’s no news to us.”