[pshrynk]

As she paid the cabby who had brought her to Sam's Authentic Cuban Bar, Constance had two thought in her head. First was how could a bar with the name of "Sam's" be an authentic Cuban bar? Overriding that thought was the one that involved boiling acid and her Station Agent. Straightening up, she saw a Marine fly through the doorway, landing face down in the street. Ah, one of those types of bars.

A sailor was reeling against the door when she walked in. Shoving him to one side, she quickly looked around for a man wearing a white suit and Panama hat. That was the trademark dress of Professor Augustus[/COLOR][/SIZE][/COLOR][/SIZE] [/SIZE Keaneer Slopeton PhD, her quarry. Idly, she wondered why it was that archeologists always wore white suits. Really, she thought, their job consists entirely of digging. She blocked a swung fist and dug her knuckles into the sailor's solar plexus.

She felt an odd tingling in the back of her head. Her sister had told her about this when her Knack had shown itself to be the ability to make budgerigars speak Russian. A tingly, mellow sort of feeling, it had been. Constance had never had her Knack show up. Some people never did. This could not possibly be a Knack, anyway. It was tingly in a mauve sort of way. She gasped, looking around. No budgerigars, thank God. Across the room a man wearing a floppy flight cap was staring at her in an odd way. A Marine walloped him hard and he went down. The tingling stopped.

Wincing, she avoided the flying bodies of two combatants grappling their way to the front door. Getting there, they broke free and rushed out the door. Huh, some people would do anything to avoid paying their tab. She spied a table that was still upright and navigated there. She was going to just sit out the rest of this fight and then she would make her contact. A small grey dog ran across the room and started drinking beer that was on an abandoned table.

She supposed that it was probably too much to ask for a waiter to bring her a Cosmoploitan at this stage. She sat quietly and awaited the break in the action. Looking over at the door, she noticed a man walking in. He looked familar. He was one of the faces she had run across in the avalanche of papers in Biggles' office. She couldn't quite place him...

The man was struck by a fighter and fell down on top of the small grey dog as the table collapsed.