Stop Look and Dig | Page 3

safe that must have been built before Rhine Institute discovered the key to man's latent abilities. Inside of this tin can was a collection of photographs that must have brought Rambaugh a nice sum in the months when the murder business went slack. I couldn't quite dig them clear because I didn't know any of the people involved, and I didn't try too hard because there were some letters and notes that might lead me into the answer to why Rambaugh was hotburning for me.
I fiddled with the dial for about fifteen minutes, watching the tumblers and the little wheels go around. Then it went click and I turned the handle and opened the door. I was standing there with both hands deep in Rambaugh's safe when I heard a noise behind me.

I whirled and slid aside all in one motion and my hand streaked for my armpit and came out with the forty five. It was a woman and she was carrying nothing more lethal than the fountain pen in her purse. She blanched when she saw my forty-five swinging towards her middle, but she took a deep breath when I halted it in midair.
"I didn't mean to startle you," she apologized.
"Startle, hell!" I blurted. "You scared me out of my shoes."
I dug her purse. Beside the usual female junk she had a wallet containing a couple of charge-account plates, a driver's license, and a hospital card, all made out to Miss Martha Franklin. Miss Franklin was about twenty-four, and she was a strawberry blonde with the pale skin and blue eyes that goes with the hair. I gathered that she didn't belong there any more than I did.
"I don't, Mr. Hammond," she said.
So Martha Franklin was a mental sensitive.
"I am," she told me. "That's how I came to be here."
"I'm esper. You'll have to explain in words of one syllable because I can't read you."
"I was not far away when you cut loose with that field-piece of yours," she said flatly. "So I read your intention to come here. I've been following you at mental range ever since."
"Why?"
"Because there is something in that safe I want very much."
I looked at her again. She did not look the type to get into awkward situations. She colored slightly and said, "One indiscretion doesn't make a tramp, Mr. Hammond."
I nodded. "Want it intact or burned?" I asked.
"Burned, please," she said, smiling weakly at me for my intention. I smiled back.
On my way to Rambaugh's bedroom I dug the rest of the thug's safe but there wasn't anything there that would give me an inkling of why he was gunning for me. I came back with one of his needle-rays and burned the contents of the safe to a black char. I stirred up the ashes with the nose of the needier and then left it in the safe after wiping it clean on my handkerchief.
"Thank you, Mr. Hammond," she said quietly. "Maybe I can answer your question. Rambaugh was probably after you because of me."
"Huh?"
"I've been paying Rambaugh blackmail for about four years. This morning I decided to stop it, and looked your name up in the telephone book. Rambaugh must have read me do it."
"Ever think of the police?" I suggested.
"Of course. But that is just as bad as not paying off. You end up all over the front pages anyway. You know that."
"There's a lot of argument on both sides," I supposed. "But let's finish this one over a bar. We're crowding our luck here. In the eyes of the law we're just a couple of nasty break-ins."
"Yes," she said simply.

We left Rambaugh's apartment together and I handed Martha into my car and took off.
It struck me as we were driving that mental sensitivity was a good thing in spite of its limitations. A woman without mental training might have every right to object to visiting a bachelor apartment at two o'clock in the morning. But I had no firm plans for playing up to Martha Franklin; I really wanted to talk this mess out and get it squared away. This she could read, so I was saved the almost-impossible task of trying to convince an attractive woman that I really had no designs upon her beautiful white body. I was not at all cold to the idea, but Martha did not seem to be the pushover type.
"Thank you, Steve," she said.
"Thanks for nothing," I told her with a short laugh. "Them's my sentiments."
"I like your sentiments. That's why I'm here, and maybe we can get our heads together and figure something out."
I nodded and went back to my driving, feeling pretty good now.
A man does not dig his own apartment. He expects to find it the way he left it. He digs in the mailbox on his way