"I knew a man who had a hundred dollars once," said Walla. "A very rich man."

"You will be rich too," said the cook.

"I will have to be. I can no longer return to Busati."

By nightfall, Walla was the richest man in the history of his village and J. Gordon Dalton was sending frantic codes to Washington. A top level officer unscrambled the message:

JAMES FORSYTHE LIPPINCOTT, BALTIMORE, MISSING. BELIEVED DEAD IN BUSATI BUSH. FOUL PLAY SUSPECTED. CYNTHIA FORSYTHE, BALTIMORE, HELD HOSTAGE. AWAIT INSTRUCTIONS. INVESTIGATING.

Since Lippincott was part of the famous Lippincott family which numbered governors, diplomats, senators and most important, bankers, the message went to several department heads at 4:00 A.M. There was one problem with Dalton's message. Cynthia Forsythe could not be a hostage in Busati. She had been killed in an auto accident three months earlier. It had made the papers because she was related to the Lippincotts.

It was decided quietly to check out the dead girl's body. By noon, from dental work and a thumb print, the body was identified as not, definitely not, the body of Cynthia Forsythe.

"Who is it then?" asked the State Department man.

"Who cares?" said the FBI man. "It's not the Forsythe girl. That means she probably is a hostage in Busati."

"Well, we're going to have to tell the White House," said State. "God help anyone who runs afoul of the Lippincotts. Especially the bankers."

Five reports on the case were made in the White House, four of which went to various Lippincotts. The fifth was hand-delivered to an office in the Agriculture Department in Washington, where it was coded and sent by scrambler to what the sender believed was an office in Kansas City. But the line went to a sanatorium in Rye, New York, and in that sanatorium a decision was made that unknowingly fulfilled an ancient prediction made soon after the Loni tribe had lost its empire: