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'I am not tired,' Graves said, shaking off Nordmann's arm. 'Wright was a logical man, and there is logic in this move.'

'There are no more moves,' Nordmann said. 'We've won.'

'Yes,' Graves said. 'That's exactly what we're supposed to think.'

And he turned and walked back to the apartment.

'John,' Nordmann said, running to catch up with him. 'John, listen -'

'You listen,' Graves said. 'What's the point of knocking out the elevators after five?'

'It has no point. It's a foolish irritation.'

'Wrong,' Graves said. 'It has one important point. It traps everybody on the nineteenth floor. And it traps the tanks as well.'

'That's true,' Nordmann said. 'But it hardly matters. We've disarmed the mechanism.'

'Have we?'

'Oh, for Christ's sake, of course we have. You did it yourself. You know it's disarmed.'

'But what if it's not?'

'How can it not be?' At that, Graves sighed. 'I don't know,' he admitted. He reentered the apartment.

HE OFTEN FEELS THAT A PROBLEM IS SOLVED WHEN IT IS ONLY HALF FINISHED, OR TWO-THIRDS FINISHED.

Graves remembered the psychological report as he paced the apartment, talking out loud. Nordmann watched him and listened. In the background, cops were disassembling the tank mechanisms.

'All right,' Graves said. 'Let's think it through. Wright designed a mechanism.' 'Yes.' 'And the mechanism had a purpose.' 'Yes, to dump nerve gas over the city at five PDT.'

Graves nodded. 'And we have thwarted that.'

'Yes,' Nordmann said.

'Did he have any other purpose?'

'Well, I don't know. You could answer that better than anyone. Somebody mentioned something about disagreeing with the President over China -'

'No, no,' Graves said. 'Let's forget about motivation. Let's consider only the intent of his system. Did he intend to do anything besides dump the nerve gas?'

'Raise hell, create panic...' Nordmann shrugged.

Graves was silent, frowning at the room. 'I mean,' he said, 'did Wright intend his elaborate mechanism to do anything besides dump the gas?'

'No,' Nordmann said.

'I agree,' Graves said.

There was a long pause. Graves considered everything. he knew, from every angle. He could make no sense of it, but he somehow felt certain that pieces were missing. Vital pieces...

'He knew about you,' Graves said suddenly.

'What?'

'He knew about you. He knew that I had called you in.'

'So what?'

'Why should he care?'

'He didn't care.'

Graves began to see. It was coming into focus. 'Because,' he said, 'Wright knew about you. He knew your position, and he knew your expertise. He must have known that you could provide an antidote to the binary gas.

'If he knew you could provide an antidote, then he also knew his protection - filling this room with gas - would not work. We'd break in. He knew that.'

'Are you sure?'

'Yes, I'm sure. And he didn't care.'

'Perhaps he was bluffing,' Nordmann said.

'It's too important for a bluff. He must have had another part of his system to cover that eventuality. He must have planned it so that if we did break in, he'd still manage to win.'

Nordmann considered it all very carefully. At length he sighed and shook his head. 'I'm sorry, John,' he said, 'I think you're entirely wrong about this. You're making hypothetical sand castles in the air -'

'No!' Graves snapped his fingers. 'No, I'm not. Because there was a second purpose to his system.'

'What second purpose?'

'Wright was going to Jamaica, or somewhere, correct?'

'Correct.'

'And he was not suicidal, correct?'

'Correct. He expected to get there.'

'All right. Then that establishes the need for a second purpose. His mechanism had to do two things.'

'What two things?'

'Look,' Graves said. He spoke as rapidly as he could, but he was hardly able to keep pace with his racing mind. 'Wright planned all this and planned it carefully. If he succeeded, a million people would die, including the President. A major political party would be wiped out. There would be national panic of incredible proportions. And for some reason, he wanted that.'

'He was insane, yes...'

'But not suicidal.