by the time we closed in on the professor in an old deserted house on the outskirts of sauk city, he had managed to hang himself to a waterpipe in the basement. he wore a pair of ragged pants. he was terribly thin and his hair was white, and his toothless mouth gaped open and his jaws sucked in. i had never seen anyone appear so pitiful and so harmless as that old man hanging there.

we untied the rope and the body fell to the floor. mesner took a small disc from his case and put it over the dead man's heart, then stood up. "he's too dead. we should have gotten here a few minutes earlier."

he seemed tired as he sat down on a soggy box. his hands were dirty with coal dust and a smudge of it was on his face.

this is it, i thought. now was as good a time for it as any, because there wasn't any good time for it. he had all the advantage. and the longer it went on, the greater advantage he would have. it was only a question of time anyway, and i couldn't stand waiting.

i lunged at him. i heard the faint whining sound, saw the flash and the glint of the disc coming out of his pocket. a sudden, painless paralysis hit me and i was helpless on my knees looking at mesner. he just stared at me morosely, tired, irritated a little.

"you should know better, fred. you're smart."

"go to hell," i said.

he shook his head. "not now, fred. nor you either. it isn't me you want to get, fred. you just don't want to get bipped. you ought to trust me. i don't want to bip you, now or ever. i mean it. we need brains to catch eggheads and that's my job. you're valuable. everybody getting bipped, it isn't easy to get smart people these days."

"bip me now then, you bastard. get it over with."

"you'd better trust me. i'm being honest. some of these other orthodox jerks in security, they wouldn't fool with you. they would bip you sooner than look at you."

"why don't you?"

"i've told you, for god's sake. you're a bright guy, and i'm eager to learn. and i don't want to burn up any important info."

then i got it. then i knew why he was keeping the bipper off me.

i thought about it all the way back to washington while mesner fed himself apples. i was supposed to have valuable unconscious info. mesner wanted it. but the old crackpots were right. the means not only created the ends, but could destroy the ends if the means were bad enough. you probe and pry into a man's brain deep and hard enough and you come up with nothing. your methods have destroyed the end. you've burned out the truth you're trying to get.

mesner was trying to get info from me without burning it up.

the bastard was trying to have his bloody cake and eat it. but the insight didn't make my position any easier. he was going to get it some way. his talking and hinting and probing was designed to awaken vital memory in me, get it up into total consciousness where he could get at it with his instruments without the danger of burning it up.

soon as he got what he wanted he would bip me. i couldn't keep him from getting it because i didn't know what it was. i couldn't keep on suppressing something if i didn't know what it was, and i knew that no one can consciously suppress knowledge in himself in any case.