Paul grinned at his clean face in the mirror. "Y'know," he said to himself in the glass, "You're vaguely familiar, too."
One of the reasons why a picture of one's self does not resemble one's familiar appearance in a mirror is due to the lack of facial symmetry. The left side of a mirror image is the right side of the face on a photograph and the two seldom match.
Paul gulped and dressed quickly. Then he went to the freeze-locker and hauled out the dead man.
It would take a third observer to tell. But so far as Paul Grayson could tell, this man from Proxima I was his double!
"And that," he said in address to the corpse, "makes two of you!"
Ten days later when Paul's ship dropped out of the realm of invisibility, he was no nearer to the problem's solution. He did have a course of action formulated, however. So his first telephone call was not to Nora Phillips. It was to John Stacey, the detective.
"Look," came the cheerful reply, "if you want to murder someone, go ahead. But there's no sense in putting yourself in jeopardy by carrying the mortal remains around with you. Why didn't you dump the thing out in space?"
"Now, for the first time in years, you make sense."
"But look," said Stacey suddenly, "just what kind of mess have you gotten yourself into?"
"You answer that one, it's your question."
"Missing?" exploded Paul. "Where did she go?"
"Damned little. She left you on your departure day and started to drive back to town. Instead of returning to her office or going home, she turned off on Bridge Street and stopped at a mansion, Number 7111, to be exact. Drove her car into the garage as though she were expected. Hasn't come out since."
"You haven't kept a man watching the place for all this time?"
"No, but I've had a gent prowl the joint at least once a day for the last two weeks, and the car is still in the garage. You can see it through the windows of the door."
"Garage is connected to the house. She could have gone into the house without breathing fresh air."
"By careful enquiry, we've learned that she resigned. By letter."
"Well, law outfits seldom take kindly to characters asking leading questions. But an advertisement appeared for a librarian and I had Milly fill it. She pored through the personnel files and found a typed letter of resignation. Terse; disappointingly uninformative."