He said, "Are you ordering me not to see him?"
"No. No. You do as you see fit. You're heading this investigation. Only..."
"Only what?"
The Commissioner shook his head. "Nothing. - Where is he? You know who I mean."
Baley did. He said, "Daneel's still at the files."
The Commissioner paused a long moment, then said, "We're not making much progress, you know."
"We're not making any so far. Still, things may change."
"All right, then," said the Commissioner, but he didn't look as though he really thought it were all right.
R. Daneel was at Baley's desk, when the latter returned.
"Well, and what have you got?" Baley asked gruffly.
"I have completed my first, rather hasty, search through the files, partner Elijah, and I have located two of the people who tried to track us last night and who, moreover, were at the shoe store during the former incident."
"Let's see."
R. Daneel placed the small, stamp-size cards before Baley. They were mottled with the small dots that served as code. The robot also produced a portable decoder and placed one of the cards into an appropriate slot. The dots possessed electrical conduction properties different from that of the card as a whole. The electric field passing through the card was therefore distorted in a highly specific manner and in response to that specification the three-by-six screen above the decoder was filled with words. Words which, uncoded, would have filled several sheets of standard size report paper. Words, moreover, which could not possibly be interpreted by anyone not in possession of an official police decoder.
Baley read through the material stolidly. The first person was Francis Clousarr, age thirty-three at time of arrest two years before; cause of arrest, inciting to riot; employee at New York Yeast; home address, so-and-so; parentage, so-and-so; hair, eyes, distinguishing marks, educational history, employment history, psychoanalytic profile, physical profile, data here, data there, and finally reference to a photo in the rogues' gallery.
"You checked the photograph?" asked Baley. "Yes, Elijah."
The second person was Gerhard Paul. Baley glanced at the material on that card and said, "This is all no good."
R. Daneel said, "I am sure that cannot be so. If there is an organization of Earthmen who are capable of the crime we are investigating, these are members. Is that not an obvious likelihood? Should they then not be questioned?"
"We'd get nothing out of them."
"They were there, both at the shoe store and in the kitchen. They cannot deny it."
"Just being there's no crime. Besides which, they can deny it. They can just say they weren't there. It's as simple as that. How can we prove they're lying?"
"I saw them."
"That's no proof," said Baley, savagely. "No court, if it ever came to that, would believe that you could remember two faces in a blur of a million."
"It is obvious that I can."
"Sure. Tell them what you are. As soon as you do that, you're no witness. Your kind have no status in any court of law on Earth."
R. Daneel said, "I take it, then, that you have changed your mind."
"What do you mean?"
"Yesterday, in the kitchen, you said there was no need to arrest them. You said that as long as I remembered their faces, we could arrest them at any time."
"Well, I didn't think it through," said Baley. "I was crazy. It can't be done."
"Not even for psychological reasons? They would not know we had no legal proof of their complicity in conspiracy."
Baley said, tensely, "Look, I am expecting Dr. Gerrigel of Washington in half an hour. Do you mind waiting till he's been here and gone? Do you mind?"
"I will wait," said R. Daneel.
Anthony Gerrigel was a precise and very polite man of middle height, who looked far from being one of the most erudite roboticists on Earth. He was nearly twenty minutes late, it turned out, and quite apologetic about it. Baley, white with an anger born of apprehension, shrugged off the apologies gracelessly. He checked his reservation on Conference Room D, repeated his instructions that they were not to be disturbed on any account for an hour, and led Dr. Gerrigel and R. Daneel down the corridor, up a ramp, and through a door that led to one of the spy-beam-insulated chambers.
Baley checked the walls carefully before sitting down, listening to the soft burr of the pulsometer in his hand, waiting for any fading of the steady sound which would indicate a break, even a small one, in the insulation. He turned it on the ceiling, floor, and, with particular care, on the door. There was no break.
Dr. Gerrigel smiled a little. He looked like a man who never smiled more than a little. He was dressed with a neatness that could only be described as fussy. His iron-gray hair was smoothed carefully back and his face looked pink and freshly washed. He sat with a posture of prim stiffness as though repeated maternal advice in his younger years concerning the desirability of good posture had rigidified his spine forever.
He said to Baley, "You make this all seem very formidable."
"It's quite important, Doctor. I need information about robots that only you can give me, perhaps. Anything we say here, of course, is top secret and the City will expect you to forget it all when you leave." Baley looked at his watch.
The little smile on the roboticist's face winked away. He said, "Let me explain why I am late." The matter obviously weighed upon him. "I decided not to go by air. I get airsick."
"That's too bad," said Baley. He put away the pulsometer, after checking its standard settings to make last-minute certain that there was nothing wrong with it, and sat down.