“Look here,” he said at last, with a smile he desperately hoped was winning. “I’ll put it is the terms that you just did. You, for reasons best known to yourselves, want to rent a thirteenth floor. This building, for reasons best known to its architect—who, I am certain, was a foolish, eccentric man whom none of us would respect at all—this building has no thirteenth floor. Therefore, I can’t rent it to you. Now, superficially, I’ll admit, this might seem like a difficulty, it might seem as if you can’t get exactly what you want here in the McGowan Building. But what happens if we examine the situation carefully? First of all, we find that there are several other truly magnificent floors—”

He broke off as he realized he was alone. His visitors had risen in the same incredibly rapid movement and gone out the door.

“Most unfortunate,” he heard the tall man say as they walked through the outer office. “The location would have been perfect. So far from the center of things.”

“Not to mention,” the tiny man added, “the building’s appearance. So very unpresentable. Too bad.”

He raced after them, catching up in the corridor that opened into the lobby. Two things brought him to a dead stop. One was the strong feeling that it was beneath a newly appointed resident agent’s dignity to haul prospective customers back into an office which they had just quit so abruptly. After all, this was no cut-rate clothing shop—it was the McGowan Building.

The other was the sudden realization that the tall man was alone. There was no sign of the tiny man. Except—possibly—for the substantial bulge in the right-hand pocket of the tall man’s overcoat…

“A pair of cranks,” he told himself as he swung around and walked back to the office. “Not legitimate clients at all.”

He insisted on Miss Kerstenberg’s listening to the entire story, despite Professor Scoggins’s stern injunctions against overfraternization with the minor clerical help. She cluck-clucked and tsk-tsked and stared earnestly at him through her thick glasses.