“So: if you will tell me where the leak is, we will consider that part of the question closed. I make that condition not as a price, but because I don’t want to get myself engaged to somebody who might be shot as a spy within a month.”
“Fair enough,” Dana said. “Robin, your leak is Margaret Soames. She is an Erskine operative, and nobody’s bubble-brain. She’s a highly trained technician.”
“Well, I’ll be damned,” Weinbaum said in astonishment.
“Then she’s already flown the coopshe was the one who first told me we’d identified you. She must have taken on that job in order to hold up delivery long enough to stage an exit.”
“That’s right. But you’ll catch her, day after tomorrow.
And you are now a hooked fish, Robin.”
There was another suppressed burble from Thor Wald.
“I accept the fate happily,” Weinbaum said, eying the gunsight knee. “Now, if you will tell me how you work your swami trick, and if it backs up everything you’ve said to the letter, as you claim, I’ll see to it that you’re also taken into the bureau and that all charges against you are quashed.
Otherwise, I’ll probably have to kiss the bride between the bars of a cell.”
Dana smiled. “The secret is very simple. It’s in the beep.”
Weinbaum’s jaw dropped. “The beep? The Dirac noise?”
“That’s right. You didn’t find it out because you considered the beep to be just a nuisance, and ordered Miss Soames to cut it off all tapes before sending them in to you. Miss Soames, who had some inkling of what the beep meant, was more than happy to do so, leaving the reading of the beep exclusively to ‘J. Shelby Stevens’who she thought was going to take on Erskine as a client.”