Claire turned. "There are none," she said, looking at him with
desperate eyes. "The box is empty; he must have used them all."

He shot a quick glance at Latterman, catching the sales manager before
he could erase a look of triumph from his face. Things began to add
up. Latterman, of course, was the undercover man for Wilton Joyner and
Harvey Graves and the rest of the Conservative faction at Literates'
Hall, just as he, himself, was Lancedale's agent. Obsessed with
immediate advantages and disadvantages, the Joyner-Graves faction
wanted to secure the re-election of Grant Hamilton, and the way things
had been going in the past two months, only Chester Pelton's death
could accomplish that. Latterman had probably thrown out Pelton's
nitrocaine capsules and then put Bayne up to insulting Pelton's
daughter, knowing that a fit of rage would bring on another heart
attack, which could be fatal without the medicine.

"Well, send for more!"

"The prescription's in the safe," she said faintly.

The office safe was locked, and only a Literate could open it. The
double combination was neatly stenciled on the door, the numbers
spelled out as words and the letters spelled in phonetic equivalents.
All three of them--himself, Claire, and Russell Latterman--could read
them. None of them dared admit it. Latterman was fairly licking his
chops in anticipation. If Cardon opened the safe, Pelton's campaign
manager stood convicted as a Literate. If Claire opened it, the gaggle
of Illiterate clerks in the doorway would see, and speedily spread
the news, that the daughter of the arch-foe of Literacy was herself