Writer: Dave Wood

Penciller: Gil Kane

Inker: Gil Kane

Synopsis: Star Hawkins arrives at his office and finds a horde of bill collectors at his door. He puts on an instant disguise and acts like Star Hawkins is escaping to the elevator, causing the bill collectors to stampede toward it. After he enters his office and sees that Ilda is not there, he begins to worry, but soon, Ilda shows up, wearing a wig, lips, an evening gown and elegant gloves. She explains to Star that she had been spotted by a talent scout and offered a spot in a robot acting school and a movie. She points out to Star that despite his recent capture of Astro Allie at a golf tournament, he received no reward money for it, since Star didn't retrieve the jeweled cup that Allie had stolen. Star conceded the need for them to make money somehow, and she assures him that if he needs access to information stored in her brain-files, he can just call her. At the acting school, the proprietors watch her approach and comment that they had set up a fake acting school for the sole purpose of retrieving the information stored in Ilda's brain. Ilda enters and is immediately smitten by someone disguised as Clark Clinker, the (very handsome) "King" of robot actors. "Clark" gets Ilda to start taking, and the others use a truth battery and tranquilizing oil on her to make her tell them everything they ask for. On the prompting of the others, "Clark" asks Ilda to tell him about Astro Allie's confession to the police, and when she complies with the request, an alarm goes off in Star's office, telling him that she's revealing secrets. He listens in and hears her recite Astro Allie's confession, and hears the people with Ilda stop her and tranquilize her after she says only sixteen words. Star figures out that the talent scouts were really Allie's allies and that the confession contained a secret code telling them where the jeweled cup is. Soon, the crooks arrive at the golf course and start digging around hole two, but to their surprise, they dig up Star, who had figured out the code and met them there. Star then checks on Ilda, but the crooks blast him. She manages to take them out with some well-placed golf shots, and when Star wakes up, he explains their secret code to Ilda, and he offers to take his would-be-actress secretary to a movie.

Detective rating: Excellent decoding by Star. It was pretty lucky for him that Ilda got captured by the crooks, but even so, he did enough deduction to earn an 8 on a scale of 1 to 10.

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