Pity Him Afterwards

Thinking of the afternoon’s interview with Captain Sondgard, and the night’s laughter with the other members of the company, the madman smiled and smiled, nearly bursting out loud into laughter. It was all so good!

He couldn’t contain himself, he couldn’t remain motionless. He got to his feet and paced the room, barefoot and in darkness, rubbing his hands together and nodding his head, mumbling to himself as he did when not quite talking to himself out loud. His body seemed filled with electricity; vitality coursed through him. He was strong, strong, stronger than he’d ever been before.

The room couldn’t hold him. He couldn’t be confined now, feeling as he did, he couldn’t be confined by anything. He prowled around the room, touching the walls in the darkness, brushing his nervous hands over the furniture, his eyes staring into the blackness, his smiling mouth mumbling as he talked to himself.

“They’ll never know, they’ll never suspect. I can’t be held, I can’t be questioned. I’m too clever now, I’ll never have to do anything again like the old man and the old woman. My powers are too strong now, they’re stronger and stronger. Nothing can hold me now, nothing can stop me. I can be free now, I can stay away from Doctor Chax. I can be safe now from the cruelty, I can keep away from all that. I won’t ever be caught again, because I’m too strong now. Those who are hateful and vicious will never have the chance to turn on me, because now I will recognize them. And if I have to kill them, if they force me to kill them the way that girl forced me, I can be clever. I didn’t know anything before, that’s why they caught me. I didn’t try to hide or be subtle, I did what had to be done right out in the open. I didn’t understand the world then, I didn’t understand the way they all band together, the way the evil protect each other. I did what had to be done right out in the open, and the rest of the evil ones took revenge on me, they locked me away and they tried to force their wills on me with the shock treatments, and now that can’t happen any more. If I’m forced to it again, if it has to be done, now I know how, now I can keep them from ever finding out it was me. I can be all over the world, I can go anywhere and do anything and they’ll never even suspect me. I can get a mask if I want, I can go out at night to do what has to be done. They can’t ever find me and they can’t ever stop me and they can’t ever get even with me again. I’m too strong for them now, I’m too clever for them now.”

None of it came out in articulated words. He thought the words, and his lips moved, and he made small sounds in his throat, but it was all mumbling, too low to be heard outside the room.

He prowled for ten minutes or more, touching the walls and the furniture, smiling in the darkness, telling himself the same things over and over again, and recounting for himself the part he had played in tonight’s conversation, and telling himself he hadn’t been suspected, and so never would be suspected. He spent ten minutes roaming and muttering, and then the room was just too small to be lived in any more, he could no longer ignore how close together the walls were.

He got dressed again. His movements were unsure, because of the darkness and his excitement, and also because he was still feeling the effects of the beer he had drunk. It had been more than four years since he had had alcohol, and that was probably another reason why the being had been able to take over so readily. Not that he was drunk; but his high spirits were heightened even more by the exhilaration of alcohol.

He didn’t turn the room light on at all. When he was dressed, he crept from his room and locked the door after himself. A twenty-five-watt bulb in a wall socket gave the hallway wan lighting. The madman crept downstairs, not wanting to be noticed. It would seem strange to anyone else, that he should want to go out again, past two o’clock in the morning, but he did have to go. He had to walk outside for a while, with nothing but the sky over him. He had to be able to run if he wanted, and to laugh aloud.

The front door was locked. He left it unlocked behind him when he went out, because he didn’t have a key. He moved silently down off the porch and across the gravel to the road. Then he turned right, away from the Black Lake Lounge, in the direction of town.

As he walked along, the feeling of delight grew and grew in him. Freedom was wonderful! He waved his arms all around, stretching them out away from his body as far as they would go, and his fingertips touched only air. Nothing hemmed him in, nothing. He jumped up into the air, he trotted a few steps, he capered, he danced across the road. Sheltered by the night, defended by his cleverness, protected by his strength, he had won his freedom and he had earned his freedom and now he was enjoying his freedom.

No walls! No heavy-handed dour-faced “nurses”! No locks and bars! No questions! No “treatments”! No orders, no rules, no restraints.

Freedom!

He laughed aloud, he shouted. He capered down the road, dancing and leaping, filled to overflowing with wild joy, shaking himself like any long-caged creature newly released.

He raised his head and shouted out a song of his own invention:

But all at once he did stop. Two overlapping images had come into his mind, drawing together a parallel he had not noticed before now. Two overlapping images. The office of Doctor Chax. The kitchen where Captain Sondgard had questioned them all. The images overlapped, like a double-exposed photograph, joining and blending into one image only at the particular spot where in both instances there was movement. In the office of Doctor Chax — whether he called himself Doctor Reed or Doctor Peterby or Doctor Samuelson, in all the offices so much alike — and in the kitchen while Captain Sondgard was asking his questions, in both places there had been a stillness, a heavy unmoving, all except in one place. The turning of the reels, the one reel turning faster than the other, the tape feeding through the maw of the little machine that gobbled one’s words. He had recognized the tape recorder when first he’d gone in to see Captain Sondgard — it had given him a bad moment, in fact — but then he’d forgotten it, in the relief of knowing that Captain Sondgard could not see through his disguise.

But now it came back. Doctor Chax existed in stillness, all save the erratic motion of the tape recorder, the two reels never spinning at the same speed. And now Captain Sondgard too existed in stillness, with but the same single exception.

A sign? An omen? A warning?

Must he understand from this that Captain Sondgard was a danger? Could it be that Captain Sondgard had a direct connection with Doctor Chax? Could he be Doctor Chax himself, in disguise, playing out another of his vicious games, trying to trick and to trap him, knowing all along that he was really Robert Ellington?

He stood in the middle of the road, all his joy and confidence draining away from him. He shook his head back and forth, and moaned in distress, as he had done in front of the house where he had been forced to kill the two old people. Now that it was all over, now that he had been sure he would never have to kill again — he remembered killing Cissie Walker, but only vaguely, in an unreal and academic manner, and without clear recollection of the details and the reasons, though he instinctively remembered that the reasons had been valid ones — now, now, now that he had thought himself free, was it to start all over again?

He could afford to take no chances. He was not going back there, back to the asylum, he was not going to fall into their clutches again. He could afford to take no chances, he would have to act wherever danger threatened.

This time, this time he must finish Doctor Chax forever. This time, he must kill Doctor Chax and have an end to it.

He stared down the road. Where was he now, Doctor Chax, calling himself Sondgard? In what brown cranny was he hiding, rubbing his hands together in the warm dim glow of the desk lamp, planning his perversities of the morrow?

If only he knew. If only he knew where to find this Captain Sondgard tonight, he could end it right now, be safe once and for all.

Tomorrow. Sometime tomorrow it would have to be. He would have to be sly, careful, cautious. No one must suspect. Somehow, without arousing suspicions anywhere, he would have to find out the location of Captain Sondgard’s lair. And then, tomorrow night, he could finish him.

Tomorrow night.

The thought soothed him, but didn’t restore his high spirits. Nevertheless, he didn’t turn back toward the house, but started walking again along the road in the direction of town. He walked more calmly now, his face somber, his gaze downward at the road directly in front of him.

And then, out of the corner of his eye, he saw the gate.

He raised his head, and stared at the gate. It was high and wide, and made of iron, with thick vertical bars and rococo iron scrollwork between. A great heavy lock bound the two sides together at the middle, and at either end they were hinged to foot-square brick pillars with concrete caps.

He stared at this gate, and frowned, and gazed this way and that along the road.

He was fenced in.

He hadn’t noted it till now, had paid no attention to it. But the road, all along on the left-hand side, was fenced. Tall wire fencing, thousands of metal diamonds linked together to keep him in. And here, at a break in the fence, brick and concrete and iron, and a great heavy lock.

This couldn’t be. He growled deep in his throat; his shoulders hunched, and his hands bunched up into fists. He was free now, this couldn’t be! Damn their eyes, damn their black souls, they never let him alone!

All right. All right. He would take the challenge. They would find out now what manner of man they were dealing with. They would find out now what he thought of their petty harassment.

He went over to the gate, and grasped the iron bars. They were cold and rough to the touch, and night-damp. Beyond them, in deeper gloom, a narrow road curved away into trees. All was darkness.

He started to climb. The scrollwork on the gate helped him, and at the top he was very careful because the vertical bars ended in spikes. He raised himself carefully over these, found footing on the highest scrollwork on the other side, and climbed down again to the ground.

So much for their challenge. Did they think an iron gate would stop him? He was free now, and powerful in the knowledge of his freedom. Never would he allow them to limit him again.

He turned away from the gate and started down the road. He had gone barely six steps from the gate when a sudden light flashed in his eyes, and a harsh voice cried, “Stay right where you are, you.”

The shock, the surprise, the blinding light in his eyes, the sudden fear, all combined, and in automatic response he shrank away. The being took over, all at once, and the tiny spark of Robert Ellington crouched low in its dark corner. Let the being take care of this.

But it was not the one he’d expected. It was not the composite character who had taken over earlier tonight, in the Lounge. It was some other being, some darker creation he remembered only vaguely, from long long ago, from the forgotten time before he was ever in the asylum. Beaten down and subdued by the ministrations of Doctor Chax, it had lain undetected all this time at the very core of him. With freedom, it had slowly begun to emerge. The killings he had been forced to commit had strengthened it, and this sudden surprise and shock and blindness had given it the opening it needed.

Only one small spark of self-awareness was left, and that mite struggled to get back into control. This being, this thing, it couldn’t be a part of Robert Ellington! Mindless, brutal, fetid with its own horrible memories, steaming and stinking, it was nothing that could ever be a part of him, nothing that he could have carried all this time within himself.

Recoiling, unbelieving, not wanting to believe or know or remember, the last crouching bit of self-awareness went down to black.

The flashlight was ahead and to the right. The madman turned that way, and shuffled forward.

The voice behind the flashlight, on a rising inflection, cried out, “Stay where you are! Keep back! I warn you, I’ve got a gun!”

The madman leaped. The only shot went high over his back, and then gun and flashlight clattered away to the blacktop, the flashlight going out as it hit.

The blackness was complete now, but the madman didn’t have to see. His hands gripped, found cloth, found a naked wrist. A flailing fist was striking at his shoulder, at the side of his head. His hands moved, closed on wrist and arm, moved again, pressed and levered. There was a dry and muffled snapping sound, and the guard screamed. The madman’s clawing hand found the screaming face, closed down on it, snuffing out the scream.

The guard was dead long before he was finished. He broke, he tore, he pounded. In the silence of the night, the sounds were small and moist and heavy.

The madman rose at last to his feet. His hands and forearms were sticky. His face was smeared with stickiness. A strong odor was in his nostrils.

He moved on down the road.

He came at last to a house, broad and sprawling, built at the very edge of the lake. Smooth lawns surrounded it, darkness enclosed it.

The madman moved around the house, hesitating to enter. No real thoughts were moving in his mind now, only impressions. The impression of danger. The impression that the guard had tried to keep him from coming here, so there must be something of value here for him. But strongest of all, the impression of danger.

Danger emanated from the house. It was so broad, so squat. A wide garage stood near it, and then a boathouse built out over the lake. All the structures emanated waves of danger. The madman roamed back and forth, back and forth, all around the house. If he’d met anyone at all on the grounds, he would have killed again, but instinctively he kept outside the house.

The feeling of danger, the meaninglessness of the prowling, the inaction now after the violent action of before, all combined to weaken the creature that was now in control of the madman, to weaken him and make him uneasy. Slowly, reluctantly, he relinquished control, but not as completely as before. He wouldn’t be tucked so far away any more, now that he too had had a taste of freedom.

Self-awareness returned to the madman slowly, and vaguely. He was befuddled, unable to think clearly. His memory of the last half-hour was almost nonexistent, but he did know that he was covered with blood. Only this one fact was really clear in his mind.

He felt lost, and small, and alone. He stood on the shore, the lake stretching black and flat out ahead of him, the lawns sloping gently upward behind him, the sprawling house and its outbuildings dark humps to his left. He was tiny, he was too small to measure. Naked and exposed here, with the black unbroken flatness of lake and lawn all around him, he felt like an insect, so infinitesimal and fragile that he could break his own bones apart by a careless quick intake of breath. He could turn now and run, running wildly, stretching his stubby legs out ahead, flailing his little arms, and run in a dead straight line across the rolling surface of the earth until he died, and the little distance he would cover would be too small to be recorded by the finest and most delicate measuring instruments.

He looked up. Above him, there was nothing. And nothing, and nothing, receding away like a hopeless shout, and dying out in upper emptiness. And far beyond that, so many millions of times his own scrubby height that the number could not be written, were the cold stars, little white lights of pain at the very top of the sky.

He sank to the ground. He was at the very edge, between lawn and lake, where the ground was wet and cold. His fingers scratched meaninglessly at the ground. Tears dribbled down his face, streaking the ribbons of blood on his cheeks. The bleakest of despair washed over him, like fog. His thoughts were vague and troubled, uneasy with black and red movements, half-caught images, uneasy sensations, unclear suggestions. His head rolled back and forth, and tears stained with blood trickled down onto the ground. Regrets and longings filled his troubled brain.

He could no longer believe in his own cleverness and strength and power. He could no longer believe in the inevitability of his success, the permanence of his freedom.

Out of the confusion and the despair there gradually grew a new kind of strength. He would continue, he would live on, but not because he was any longer sure of his eventual triumph. He would live on because that was his role, because this was the part he had to play. Even if defeat seemed certain, he would keep on until the end. Because there was nothing else for him to do.

He would fight no less strongly now. His commitment was as complete as ever. The only change would be that something had been lost within him. Never again would he feel the exultation that had lifted him earlier tonight. Never again would he caper on a night-black road.

He came up again to his feet, tottering, having trouble ordering his body and maintaining his balance. His mind was clearing somewhat, and he was becoming capable of thinking about the immediate future.

There were still things to be done. Sondgard/Chax still loomed ahead of him, but that was far away, tomorrow or later. The immediate problem was to get through the night.

He had to cleanse himself. And he had to return to the house. And he had to cover any tracks he might unwittingly have left behind him, which could lead Sondgard/Chax to his door.

He stepped forward. Fully clothed, he stepped into the lake, wading out till the water was chest-high. Then he bent forward, and dipped his head down into the cold water. He scrubbed his face and hands, and rubbed his hands over his clothing, trying to wash all the blood away. At last, dripping, he came out of the lake again.

His clothes hung heavy to him. His shoes were soggy weights. But his face was cool, his mind clear. He started home.

It was harder to climb the gate this time, in the wet and heavy clothes, but he made it, falling heavily on the other side, hurting his shoulder. He struggled to his feet and walked away along the road, rubbing his shoulder. He walked somberly now, heavily, with none of his earlier enthusiasm.

The house was still in darkness, except for the hall lights, when he got back to it. He took off his shoes outside and tied the wet laces together, and hung the shoes around his neck. Then he went inside, and carefully locked the door behind him.

He was about to go upstairs when he glanced toward the farther end of the hall, where the kitchen was, and suddenly realized he was very hungry. His appetite was usually not keen, but now a gnawing emptiness had hollowed out his belly, and all at once he was so hungry his hands were shaking.

He moved down the hall and stepped into the dark kitchen. He didn’t turn on the large circular fluorescent light in the ceiling, but did switch on the smaller light over the sink. He opened the refrigerator door and found a bottle of milk and a loaf of bread and a jar of raspberry jam. He sat at the kitchen table and made himself a sandwich, and drank the milk.

He ate two sandwiches and drank the entire quart of milk before the gnawing in his belly went away. Then he sat there a while longer, staring at the opposite wall.

This was where Sondgard/Chax had been sitting. He had sat across the way there, answering the questions. The tape recorder with its syzygetic reels had been placed there, to the right.

Bemused, still gazing thoughtfully into the middle distance, he reached out his left hand and picked up the jar of raspberry jam and turned it upside down. The jam oozed out, plopping onto the kitchen table, falling in slow chunks. His right hand groped for the knife he’d been using — he still didn’t look at what he was doing — and he used it now to scrape the rest of the jam out of the jar and onto the table.

Then he got to his feet. At the sink, he washed the empty milk bottle, and the dish on which he’d made the sandwiches, and the jar the jam had come in. He left all three on the drain-board, and then turned back to the table.

He started to spread the jam on the table. At first he used the knife, spreading it as though he were spreading jam on bread, but after a minute he put the knife down and used his fingers. His hands pushed and spread the jam, and when he was finished he stood back and looked at it. His clothes were still soggy and shapeless, his shoes hung around his neck, his hands were smeared with jam.

The table now looked like a great open wound, red and scabrous. He looked at it, but didn’t seem really to focus on it. His eyes were vague and filmy, as though he were still gazing into the middle distance while thinking of something else.

He pushed his hands into the open wound. His fingers made meaningless streaks and snarls on it, like finger-painting. He waved his hands through the mess for a few minutes, and then suddenly turned away and stepped purposefully to the sink. He washed the knife, then washed his hands, then washed the faucets where he had touched them and streaked jam on them.

Just before turning out the light, he glanced over again at the table. Why had he done that? He looked at it, and it was meaningless.

He switched off the light, and went upstairs.

Sondgard stood with his back to the wall. The Hunchback of Notre Dame stood in front of him, laughing, holding his curved hands up to let Sondgard know he would strangle him. Sondgard said, “Why do you do this?” But the Hunchback’s answer was drowned out by the sudden pealing of the bells. The Hunchback glared upward, suddenly enraged, crying, “Those are my bells!” The pealing stopped, and Sondgard, puzzled, said, “I thought you were a deaf-mute.” And again just as the Hunchback answered, the bells began to peal. “Why, they’re calling me,” thought Sondgard, surprised that anyone should know he was here, and he sat up, and it was the telephone ringing.

He rubbed his head. “A dream,” he mumbled. He’d been dreaming, but he couldn’t remember what. Something about a stone wall.

The phone took a deep breath, and rang again. It was way out in the living room, so he had to get out of bed, kick into slippers, and shuffle out of the bedroom. He crossed the living room and picked up the phone and said, “Hello?” His voice was fuzzy.

It was Joyce Ravenfield, sounding frightened, “Eric, can you get down here? Right away.”

“What time is it?”

“Ten after six.”

He closed his eyes, and rubbed his forehead again. He’d been up till two this morning, listening to the tapes of yesterday’s interviews, with no success. “Where are you?” he asked.

“At the office. No, wait, don’t come here. I’m sorry, Eric, I’m a little shaken. Give me a second.”

“Sure.” He was more than willing. He needed a second himself. He dropped down onto the sofa, and tried to think. It was ten after six and Joyce was calling him on the phone.

And sounding completely rattled.

That was wrong. Joyce was never rattled. Joyce was the most efficient woman alive.

If Joyce was rattled—

“What is it?” he asked. He was suddenly wide awake.

“There’s been another one,” she said. “Larry Temple called me.”

Larry was the college student, working here as a patrolman this summer, and taking the night patrol. Sondgard said, “Another what? Joyce? Another killing, you mean?”

“I’m sorry, Eric, this is so stupid.” She seemed on the verge of tears. “I came all the way down here, I wasted all this time. I just wasn’t thinking, I jumped into the car— It must be twenty minutes now.”

“Take it easy, Joyce, take it easy.”

“I’m trying to take it easy! Larry called me because he doesn’t know your number yet, and he got mine out of the book. And I promised him I’d call you right away, and then instead of that I got all dressed and came down here. I don’t know what’s the matter with me.”

“Another girl, Joyce? For God’s sake, tell me.”

“No, not a girl. You know the Lowndes estate? One of the guards there. They found him this morning, and got hold of Larry, and he called me. And then, like an idiot, I—”

“All right, take it easy. Larry’s still out there?”

“Yes, I... Yes.”

“All right. Call Doc Walsh. And Mike. Tell Mike... Tell him he doesn’t have to come in yet, but stand by. And call Dave and tell him to stay off that damn boat today and near a phone, just in case.” This last was Dave Rand, the Floridian who operated the police launch here in the summer.

“Right, Eric,” she said. “And... Do you want me to call Garrett?”

Sondgard pressed his hand to his forehead. He could feel a splitting headache coming on. The silent phone hissed in his ear, and finally he said, “Do you think I should?”

“I don’t know, Eric. I honestly don’t know.”

He shook his head, not knowing either. “We’ll wait,” he said. “We’ll wait and see.”

“All right, Eric. I’ll stay here at the office, in case you need me for anything.”

“Fine. Call Larry, tell him I’m on my way.”

“I will.”

Sondgard hung up and pushed himself to his feet. He was awake now, but the headache was coming on stronger and stronger. He padded back across the living room and into the bathroom, and drank down two aspirin with a glass of water. Then he stripped out of his pajamas and took a quick cold shower. He had a lean hard body, had been slender and hard-fleshed all his life, despite his sedentary primary occupation. It was only in the summertime that he got any exercise at all.

Out of the shower in less than three minutes, he hurriedly scrubbed himself dry, padded nude back to the bedroom, and dressed. The four rooms of his flat — living room, bedroom, bathroom, kitchen — formed the four quarters of a square, with all rooms connecting to the living room, but none of the other three rooms connected with each other. This awkward arrangement of rooms filled the second floor of a pleasant white clapboard house on East Robin Road, which Sondgard rented from Mrs. Flynn, the widow who owned the house and lived on the first floor. The flat’s only entrance was up an outside staircase in the back to the kitchen door. Anyone entering the flat had to go first through the kitchen — edging around the table — and then on into the living room. The bedroom was then to the right, and the bathroom was tucked in the remaining corner, at the rear of the house and next to the kitchen.

The arrangement of rooms, while somewhat awkward, made for a light-filled apartment. Every room — even the bathroom — had windows in two walls. Light poured in from everywhere, shining on the overstuffed mohair and chipped varnish which had been Mrs. Flynn’s contribution to the furnishing of the flat, and the few clean simple pieces that had been Sondgard’s later additions. There was his leather chair, a deep dark red, with matching footstool. The small chair-side table with built-in humidor and pipe rack, filled with the pipes he only smoked while reading or listening to music. Hanging on the long wall was a painting by a friend of his back at college: a gnarled tree on an ocean cliff, with storm clouds in the background.

Now, so early in the morning, wan light made the front rooms pallid. The house faced west, so living room and bedroom got no sun till the afternoon. Sondgard finished dressing, wearing the uniform he disliked but which he had long since accepted as a necessary part of the job, and hurried through the kitchen, bright with long rays of morning sunlight, and down the outside wooden stairs, the banister damp with morning dew.

His Volvo was parked in the wide part of the driveway, beside the garage. He took a rag from under the seat and wiped condensation from the windshield, then climbed in and backed the car out to the street. He turned right and drove the two and a half blocks to Broad Avenue, then turned right again.

Broad Avenue was deserted. It was now six-twenty in the morning. The sun was behind him, glistening on the street, casting long shadows of the occasional slender trees along the sidewalks, making it difficult to tell if the two traffic lights he came to were showing red or green. He turned left at Circle South, and headed out around the lake toward the Lowndes estate five miles from town, two miles short of the summer theater.

Still not six-thirty, and he arrived at the estate entrance, to see the blue-and-white prowl car parked just inside the now-open gates. A black Mercury was parked next to it. Sondgard turned the Volvo in, left it with the other two cars, and walked over to the group beside the road.

There was Larry Temple, looking very young and fragile in his brave blue uniform. And with him were two older, tougher-looking men in dark gray uniforms with badges on their left breasts. Coming closer, Sondgard could see that the badges each had a number, and surrounding the number the legend: Trans-Continental Protective Agency.

They saw him coming. One of the private guards stepped forward, saying, “You’re the captain, right?”

“That’s right. I’m sorry I didn’t get here sooner, but I wasn’t notified till twenty minutes ago.”

“Then you made good time. Come on over, and take a look at this.”

It was ugly. Thrown away on the ground was another uniform like the ones worn by the two private guards. But this one was streaked and stained and torn, and inside it were the broken parts of a man.

“Edward Cranshaw,” said the guard. “That was his name. I notified the home office already.”

“Identification,” Sondgard started, and then he had to stop. He turned away and swallowed, glad he hadn’t had time to eat breakfast before coming out here. His mouth was full of a brackish taste, but nothing more solid than that was coming up. After a second, he tried again. “Identification can’t be easy,” he said.

“Yeah, the face, I know. I didn’t identify him by the face. Last two fingers of the left hand, see? Gone. Blown off in the war.”

“Oh. Yes, I see.”

Sondgard drifted back away from the body toward the other two men, and the guard trailed along with him, saying, “At first, I figured it was an animal got him. I don’t know what you get around here, maybe mountain lion or bear, I don’t know. I figured maybe that’s what it was, but it don’t look right. No bites. He’s pretty broken up, but he hasn’t been bit at all, so I figure it must be a man.”

“Yes,” said Sondgard.

“This rape-killing you had out to the theater yesterday. You figure this connects?”

“I suppose it does. And it was the other way around.”

The guard looked puzzled. “What was the other way around?”

“Not rape-killing. Killing-rape. He killed her first.”

“Christ on a crutch.” The guard looked back toward the body, shaking his head. “It didn’t figure to be a personal thing,” he said. “Eddie wasn’t from around this neck of the woods at all. Nobody knew him but Frank and me. Oh, yeah, by the way. I’m Harry Downs, and that’s Frank Reilly.”

“Eric Sondgard.”

They shook hands all around. Larry Temple said, “I don’t know if I did the right thing, Dr. Sondgard.” He wasn’t used yet to the new title, still spoke to him as a student speaks to a professor rather than as a patrolman speaks to his captain. “I didn’t know your number, and it isn’t in the book, and Miss Ravenfield was the only one I could think of.”

“You did fine, Larry.” Sondgard was thinking he really should get his phone number listed. The company didn’t list the numbers of the summer residents, whose phones were only in operation three months of the year, unless the resident paid an additional fee. Sondgard hadn’t ever thought the fee was worth it, since everyone who might want to call him already knew his number or could get in touch with him through the office, but now he was no longer sure. He’d talk to Walter Ravenfield, the Mayor, this afternoon; maybe he could get the town to pay the fee for him, as a necessary police expense.

Harry Downs, the talkative guard, was saying, “Eddie fired off one shot, but I can’t tell if he hit the guy or not. There’s blood all over the place, but it could all be Eddie’s.”

“No one heard the shot?”

“Nope. Frank was in the car most of the night, checking the property on the other side of the road there. That’s where we get the most trouble with neckers and kids looking to raise a little hell. They know better than to come in on this side of the road, toward the lake, but they figure anything over on the other side is just left alone all night. So Eddie was on foot, sticking close to the gate here, and Frank was over on the other side in the car, and I was back in the house, asleep.”

“What time did you find him?”

“Frank found him about five-thirty. That right, Frank? Five-thirty?”

“Five thirty-two,” said Frank. He was lighting a cigarette, cupping the match though there was only the faintest of breezes.

“So the first thing,” said Harry Downs, “he come on down to the house and got me. We went through the house first, but nobody was around and nothing was taken and no windows or doors had been forced, so then we come back and checked Eddie out, and then Harry took off in the Merc and found your boy there and clued him in.”

“That was five-forty,” said Larry, “just exactly.” He seemed pleased that he too could give an exact time, and slightly embarrassed that the rest of them might think he was putting on. “I followed the Mercury back here,” he said, “and saw the body, and then asked to use a phone. I went down to the house and called Miss Ravenfield, and then I came back here and waited. She called on the car radio a little while ago, and said you’d be coming right out.”

“Dr. Walsh should be along, too.” Sondgard turned back to the two guards. To Frank, the silent one, he said, “You didn’t see anybody at all during the night? Not out on the road there, or anywhere?”

Frank shook his head. “Nobody,” he said. “And I was awake. I don’t sleep in a car in the woods. One thing, I thought I heard somebody singing one time. I was stopped, you know, and out of the car, looking around. Heard it way off. Might of been on the road, maybe a car radio.”

“When was this?”

“Somewhere around three o’clock, I guess. I didn’t pay much attention. It didn’t sound like anything right on the property.”

“Singing.” Sondgard looked over toward the body, then quickly looked away again. He asked, “Was the gate open or closed when you came back and found him?”

“Closed. Whoever done it climbed over.”

The other guard, Harry, said, “I checked around outside. No tire tracks. Nobody pulled off the road along here last night, or it would have showed.”

“He probably walked, then. And he didn’t go down to the house?”

“I don’t know if he did or not. He didn’t get in, that’s all I know. Didn’t even try.”

“Windows and doors are kept locked.”

“One hundred per cent,” said Harry. “I check that out every night before I hit the sack.”

Sondgard looked at the gate, glanced over at the body, then down the private road toward the house and the lake. “He came over the fence. He killed. Then he turned around and went back over the fence again.”

“He was either teed off or crazy,” said Harry. “You seen what he done to Eddie.”

“Crazy,” said Sondgard, not liking the word but using it because it was handiest.

A telephone rang. Sondgard blinked, and looked around at the woods, for the moment completely baffled.

Harry said, “Excuse me,” and walked casually over to the Mercury. He opened the door on the driver’s side, reached in, and took out from under the dashboard a telephone receiver. “Downs here,” he said. He listened. “Check. We’ll be right there.” He put the phone away again and looked over at Sondgard. “You want to come along? That was old man Lowndes himself. He’s found something.”

“Of course. Larry, wait here for Dr. Walsh. I’ll be right back.”

Larry nodded, reluctantly. It was clear he didn’t like the idea of their force being divided in half. He was only twenty, a junior, one of Sondgard’s “specials,” those few students every year who give the impression they know they don’t know everything, want to learn everything, and are willing to believe their teachers know some of the things they want to learn. He had come here expecting to be a traffic cop for the summer, and Sondgard had expected the same thing. Sondgard had given him the night duty because it was normally quieter and simpler than day duty, and also because he thought Larry would take a romantic delight in the job. Neither of them had expected the job to include standing guard over a brutally murdered human being. Larry was holding up far better than Sondgard could have expected. Partially, he supposed, because Harry and Frank were here. Obvious professionals they were, and the boy would surely give anything to keep from seeming young and useless to them.

Sondgard and Harry got into the Mercury, Harry driving, and as they moved on down the road Sondgard pointed at the telephone. “Some gadget.”

“Direct connection with the house. It’s a walkie-talkie, fancied up. So they can call us if we’re out on patrol and something goes wrong. Somebody tries to break in or something.”

“What was it Mr. Lowndes found?”

“Some sort of writing, down by the lake.”

“Writing?”

But Harry didn’t know any more, and they drove the rest of the way in silence. Harry stopped the car at the end of the road, in front of the garage, and the two men walked around the garage and down toward the lake.

Everett Lowndes was standing down there at the water’s edge. A tall spare old man, he was wearing corduroy trousers and a bulky gray knit sweater. His full mane of white hair shone in the sun from across the lake. He started up the slope when he saw them coming.

“Eric Sondgard! Good to see you again.”

“How do you do, Mr. Lowndes.”

They shook hands, and Lowndes said, “The wrong circumstances for a reunion, though. Come along.”

They followed him back down to the water’s edge. The lawn petered out a few feet from the lake, and the ground from there on was dark moist soil. Lowndes said, “You’ve got to get just the right angle on it to be able to see it at all. It’s scratched into the ground. I just happened to see it, coming down here. There. Can you see it?”

Sondgard could see it. Three words, one beneath the other, scrawled repetitiously in the dirt, the letters wavy and uneven, not all of them complete:

“So he did come to the house,” said Sondgard.

“But not inside,” said Lowndes. “Of that we are quite sure.”

“He leaves notes,” Sondgard said thoughtfully. “This is the second one.”

“You think it’s the same man? The one who killed that girl yesterday?”

“I’m almost sure of it.”

“And you say he’s left another note? But this is hardly a note, is it?”

“The first one was a note. In soap, on a mirror. I’m sorry.’ ”

Harry said, “You think he’s one of these types really wants to get caught? You know, ‘Stop me before I kill again.’ ”

“Maybe. He isn’t sane, that’s all I know for sure. So I don’t know how to guess at his meanings.”

Lowndes said, “Do you suppose that’s his own name?”

“I guess it probably is. The dead man was named Eddie, wasn’t he?”

Harry nodded. “Right.”

Lowndes said, “And there’s no one named Robert in our household.”

Sondgard looked back away from the lake, toward the road. He frowned, trying to think it through. “He came over the gate,” he said. “I don’t suppose he came over to kill Eddie. He wouldn’t even have known Eddie was there. Not without seeing him. And if he’d seen Eddie, then Eddie would have had to see him.”

Harry said, “And Eddie wouldn’t have let him get all the way over the gate. You don’t just jump over that thing.”

“That’s right. So he climbed over, and started along the road, and that’s when Eddie found him. They fought, he killed Eddie, and then he kept on down here. He didn’t try to get into the house, or the— What about the garage? The boathouse?”

“We checked them,” said Harry. “Locked last night, both of them. Still locked this morning.”

“All right. So he came down here, all the way down to the edge of the lake. Then he sat down, I guess, or knelt down. And he wrote that name on the ground. Probably his own name. But, maybe not. Anyway, then he got to his feet and turned around and left.”

Lowndes said, “You know, this may seem an odd thing to say, with poor Eddie Cranshaw hardly cold, but I think I feel sorry for that man. I could almost see him just now, as you were describing his movements, and he’s really a sad and forlorn figure.”

“He’s also pretty dangerous,” said Harry.

“I grant that.”

“I know what you mean,” Sondgard told him. “I’ve felt the same way about him.” He looked back toward the road again, and saw the blue-and-white patrol car coming toward the house. “What’s this?” He started up the slope, the other two following him.

Sondgard got to the edge of the blacktop just as Larry braked the Ford to a stop. His face was paler than before, his eyes larger. He leaned over to call through the farther window, “Dr. Sondgard! They want you right away.”

“Who? Is Dr. Walsh there?”

“Yes, sir, but this is something else. Something else has happened out at the theater.”

Mel couldn’t sleep any more.

Wakefulness came to him, and he opened heavy eyelids and stared blearily at his room, and by the quality of the light he knew it was far too early for him to be awake. It had been way past one o’clock when he’d gotten to sleep last night. If he wanted to be any good to anybody today, he had to get back to sleep.

But it was no good. First, curiosity forced him to open his eyes again, to find out exactly what time it was. Then he had to poke around on the night table to find his watch, and then he was even more awake. His eyes hurt from the daylight, but still his lids had snapped open and didn’t seem to want to close again. He found his watch at last, and it was twenty minutes past six.

Five hours sleep. Impossible.

He fell back on the bed with a groan. He had to get back to sleep.

But then last night’s beer caught up with him, and he had to get up and relieve himself. The floor was icy cold on his bare feet, and the key didn’t want to unlock the door, and then the tile floor in the bathroom was even colder. By the time he got back to bed he knew it was hopeless, but still he kept trying.

And then he couldn’t get comfortable. He twisted and turned, and mashed the sheet and blanket down under his chin, and curled his knees up, and nothing did any good. The bottom sheet kept bunching into hard ridges beneath his ribs, and the top sheet and blanket were always hanging off the bed to one side or another, and didn’t reach up far enough, and pressed down on his toes.

And he was hungry.

He finally had to give up. He pushed the offending sheet and blanket away and sat up. He picked up his watch again and strapped it to his wrist and looked at it, fully believing that he had been awake half an hour or more, trying to get back to sleep, and it was now only six twenty-five. Five minutes.

So he got out of bed. He dressed, and reached for his cigarettes, and put one between his lips. But even before lighting it he got a presentiment of what the taste would be like, and he put it back in the pack. He grabbed a towel and went across the hall to the bathroom and washed his face and hands, and then went back and finished dressing, putting a clean shirt on that immediately started to itch across the shoulder blades.

He went downstairs, intending to go out to the kitchen and make himself a cup of coffee, but by the time he got to the first floor he’d thought better of it. The shape he was in, he shouldn’t mess around with stoves and breakable dishes. Maybe the Lounge would be open across the way, or maybe at least there’d be an employee around who could be talked into letting him have a cup of coffee.

He unlocked the front door and went outside to chill damp air and a yellow-orange sun six feet up from the horizon, right at eye level where it could do the most bad. He squinted away from it, and glanced off to the right, and saw three cars parked in front of the theater. There was the white Continental, which he now knew belonged to Loueen Campbell, who acted for the joy of it and not the money, and the red MG, which belonged to Bob Haldemann. But the little old dusty Dodge was there too, and that belonged to Mary Ann McKendrick. What the dickens was she doing here this early in the morning?

He decided to go find out.

He stepped down off the porch and crossed the crackling gravel to the theater. But all the doors were locked. Eight of them, eight glass doors marching along in a row, and he checked them one by one, from this end to that end, and they were all locked.

She left her car here? She went home without it?

That was silly. He knocked on the nearest glass door. Then he kicked it a little bit. And finally he saw one of the inner doors open, and Mary Ann herself peered across the lobby at him. She identified him, and then she came over and stood on the other side of the glass door and called, “What do you want?” Her voice sounded muffled and far away.

He just looked at her. He didn’t know how to answer the question in five or six words, and five or six words is about as long as a conversation can run at a clip with a locked glass door in the way. She waited, and he waited, and finally he boiled it all down to its simplest form, and shouted it through the glass: “I want a cup of coffee.”

She looked surprised, and shouted, “I haven’t got any coffee.”

“Listen, would they be” — he turned his head, and pointed toward the Lounge — “open this time of—?” It wasn’t any good. He gazed unhappily at her through the glass. “Do we have to shout through this door all the time?”

“There’s coffee in the kitchen,” she shouted, and turned away.

“God damn it!”

She turned back, surprised again. “What’s the matter with you?”

“Listen,” he shouted. “You don’t have to lock the damn — there’s no need to — I didn’t kill her, for Christ’s sake!”

“I never said you did!”

“That captain cleared me, I couldn’t have done it, the timing’s wrong.”

“That’s wonderful for you,” she said, trying to shout sarcasm. “But I have work to do.”

“At six o’clock in the morning?”

She came up close to the glass and studied him intently. “Are you drunk?”

“No! I’m hung over!”

That last about did it. His head split wide open and the sunlight seared in. He screwed his face up and put his hand to his forehead and turned away. “Never mind,” he muttered, too low for her to hear. “Just never mind.”

Behind him, there sounded a series of clicks, and she pushed open the door. When he looked back, she was standing in the doorway smiling at him. “Every time I see you you’re hung over,” she told him. “Are you hung over every day?”

“Except in Lent.”

“You want somebody to make you a cup of coffee, is that it?”

“I didn’t know when Mrs. Whatsername came to make breakfast, and if I tried it myself right now I’d blow up the house.”

“She isn’t coming at all. She called last night. The killing scared her away. She’ll be back when the fiend is caught, and not before. That was her word, fiend.”

“It’s as good as any.”

“That’s right, you saw her. So I suppose it’s all right for you to be hung over again today.”

“Thank you.” He started to reach for a cigarette, then changed his mind again. Coffee first. Then another thought occurred to him. “Are you really working at six o’clock in the morning?”

“It isn’t six o’clock, it’s after six-thirty. And yes, I really am. Or I was, until you showed up.”

“Do you always work at six o’clock in the morning?”

“Six-thirty. And no, I don’t. But there is a lot to do, and I don’t think I’ll get much chance to work later on today.” She smiled and patted his arm. “Come on, I’ll make you that coffee.”

They headed back for the house and he said, “What do you do here, anyway? I mean, I know what you do, publicity and assistant director and all that, but how come? You want to be an actress?”

“No, sillier than that.” She seemed less her practical self all at once, younger and more shy.

When she didn’t go on, he prodded her, saying, “Such as what?”

“Director.” She said it so softly, so hesitantly, that he could hardly hear the word; but once it was out, she strengthened, and the words came out of her in a sudden rush. “I want to be a director, Mel. I know, women aren’t even supposed to think that way, but that’s what I want. I have so many ideas, things I want to do— I have playbooks home, hundreds of them, full of staging directions, blocked down to every turn, every step. I have cast lists — you wouldn’t believe some of my casting, some of the plays and people I’d like to bring together. And movies!”

They were standing now on the porch, but they weren’t getting any closer to the kitchen. She stood there in front of the door, her face animated, her words quick and jumbled, her hands gesturing every which way as she talked. “There are so many things that haven’t even been tried! I go to a movie, and I look at a scene, and I say to myself, why didn’t they do it this way, why didn’t they put the camera here or here, why didn’t they get a set that, that— Oh, I don’t know, it’s just, just — I see it all so different! And when I watch Ralph work — he’s an awfully good director, Mel, he really is, but I watch him, and I think, why not have the actors do this or this, why not— You know who’s my ideal? Margo Jones, that’s who. To have my own theater, my own theater, and direct, find new plays, and new ways to do them, new, new — new approaches. I have it all in my head, and I’m learning more every day, and I don’t care what I do, I’ll do publicity or get coffee or hold the prompt book, I don’t care, just so I — just to be near it and keep on learning. Do you see?”

It was too early in the day for Mel to see much of anything clearly, but he did understand the intensity in her, and he reacted to it as he always reacted to selfless intensity, with a desire to be helpful and a feeling of sadness, because this kind of flame so rarely survived for very long, in a world that had no real use for such warmth. His voice was more serious — and compassionate — than he’d expected, as he said, “Then you ought to be in New York. You won’t get anywhere here.”

“Margo Jones didn’t work in New York, she worked in Dallas.”

“She worked in New York sometimes, and Cartier Isle is no Dallas.”

All at once, she slumped, as though already tasting defeat. “I know,” she said. “But I’m a coward. I’m twenty-two; if I’m ever going to get started it’s got to be now. But you can’t imagine how New York scares me, Mel. Here, I can make believe I’m still learning, still storing up knowledge, still getting ready for the big day. But to go to New York— I wouldn’t know anybody, I wouldn’t know where to start or what to do. If I wanted to be an actress, I could start out with little parts, I suppose, and build up. But there aren’t any minor roles for directors, there just aren’t.”

“Have you ever directed anything?”

“Oh, nothing, nothing.” She shook her head in irritation. “Just high school, and little shows at church, and sometimes I’ve taken over scenes for Ralph here, that’s all.”

“Well, you’ve met people here, people from New York. Can’t you make any contacts here, people who could help you when you got to New York, or introduce you to somebody else who could help you?”

“I don’t know, I suppose—” She shook her head. “I’m just a coward, that’s all. I don’t know if I’ll ever go or not. Maybe I’ll just start the Cartier Isle Little Theater for the winter season, and keep on doing publicity here in the summer, and die as the seventy-three-year-old town kook. Come on, I’ll make you some coffee.” She pushed open the door, and started down the hallway toward the kitchen.

He followed her, saying, “Listen, why not go to—?”

“No, don’t. I don’t want to talk about it any more. Not right now.”

“Later on.”

“All right, later on.”

They pushed open the swing door and went into the kitchen, and both of them saw it at the same time.

The kitchen table. Covered with red pulp, with an obscene red mass of lumpy sticky pulp, as though raw meat had been chopped up into tiny bits, and blood poured over it, and the whole mess had half coagulated, had started to scab over.

And scrawled through it, wavy jerky lines, narrow lines showing the table top beneath, the lines reading:

Mary Ann was backed against the wall, staring at it wide-eyed, the back of her hand pressed to her mouth. Her voice threadbare and frightened, she said, “You’d better call the police, Mel. You’d better hurry and call the police.”

Bobby did it

Sondgard sat in a kitchen chair, his arms folded across his chest, and studied the message with frustration and irritation. First ROBERT ROBERT ROBERT and now BOBBY DID IT. And before both of them I’M SORRY.

“He wants to be caught,” Sondgard murmured to himself. That was the maddening part of it. This poor creature, this pitiful and infuriating monster, wanted to be caught. He wanted to be stopped, he wanted to be punished, he wanted to be put away where he couldn’t cause any more harm. He couldn’t bring himself to just walk up to the nearest policeman and give himself up, so he did the next best thing. He left messages. He let the world know that he was sorry for what he was doing, that he didn’t want to do it, that he wanted to be stopped from doing it again, and then he let the world know who he was. Robert. Bobby.

There was only one Robert connected with the summer theater, and that was its producer, Robert Haldemann. But Haldemann was always called Bob, never either Robert or Bobby. Haldemann, Sondgard was sure, thought of himself as Bob, not as either Robert or Bobby.

Besides, Haldemann couldn’t have done it. At least, the first one he couldn’t have done, the killing of Cissie Walker. His time was accounted for, he was not even remotely a suspect.

He wants to be caught, Sondgard told himself over and over again. He wants to be caught. He is leaving us clues, he is trying to let us know. But we are too stupid to understand.

He had let them know quite a bit, be sure of quite a bit. They could be sure now that the same person had killed both Cissie Walker and Eddie Cranshaw. They could be sure that this unknown person was one of the people living in this house. After leaving his name in the dirt near the Lowndes house, he had come back here and left another note, so there could be no mistake. He was here, he was the killer of them both, and his name was Bobby.

Or at least, the name Bobby could be connected to him somehow, could lead to him in one way or another. Because his name couldn’t really be Bobby. Sondgard had a small tight list of suspects, and none of them was named Bobby.

He went over the list in his mind. The names were four:

Tom Burns? There was Bobby Burns, the Scot poet. Was the first name supposed to lead to the last name, and then around to another Burns with a different first name? It seemed complicated and roundabout, but would an insane mind work that way? Sondgard couldn’t tell.

All right, what about the rest? Ken Forrest. No connection there with the name Robert or the name Bobby. Not even a similarity of capital letters. Nor was there any famous person with the name Robert Forrest. The same with Will Henley; no similarity of capital letters, no Robert Henley a familiar name. And Rod McGee? McGee had said his first name was a nickname from Fredric, but could it actually be short for Robert? There was, in any case, a similarity of the capital R in both first names.

Sondgard shook his head in angry irritation. It was worse than a double crostic. Worse than Finnegans Wake without a pony. Worse than the detective books so many of his fellow professors — but not his fellow captains — insisted on writing every summer, in which the final clue always came from the author’s specialty; an inverted signature in a first-edition Gutenberg De civitate Dei, the misspelling of the Kurd word for bird, the inscription on a Ming Dynasty vase, or the odd mineral traces found embedded in the handle of the kris.

Bobby. Bobby. It was a name, or a nickname. It was also slang for British policemen. And a bobby-soxer used to mean a teen-ager. The word “bob” in Damon Runyon argot was a synonym for “dollar.” But so what? None of the suspects was a policeman, British or otherwise. None of them were teenagers. None had a name that was a synonym for “dollar.”

No, this wasn’t going to be a word game. The Bobby scrawled on that table was a name, and reinforced by the name Robert in the earlier message. The killer was leaving a direct clue to himself, in twice giving them this name. Somehow or other, it had to be possible to connect the name and the killer together.

Could he be dealing with one of these split-personality cases? Like The Three Faces of Eve, where the different personalities operated completely independent of one another, and even took on different names. Could one of these four people be split that way, have a different personality which every once in a while assumed control, and which was a homicidal personality, and which had taken for itself the name Robert or Bobby?

If so, it was a dead end. There was absolutely no way to guess which of these four people harbored within himself a second personality. If there was complete separation between the two, the “normal” personality would have no real memory of what the second personality had done, might only know he had a memory lapse at the times the killings took place. He might not even realize that much. The killer himself, waiting with the others again in the rehearsal room, might have no suspicion that he was the one being hunted.

Sondgard remembered thinking, when he’d seen that first note scribbled on the bathroom mirror, that he was dealing with a Jekyll and Hyde, a man whose mind had been confused, and in which confusion the Hyde — the evil part of himself — had been allowed to gain dominance. And now he wondered if it wasn’t actually a Jekyll-Hyde situation, two distinct personalities operating within the same body.

But how to find Hyde, if Jekyll didn’t even know he existed?

Yesterday, of course, as part of normal procedure, he had requested police checks on nearly everyone at the theater. If Hyde had been acting up before all this, some police organization somewhere might have run across Jekyll before. But it could be that Hyde had just emerged very recently, and had no prior activities. Or, since all of his suspects had lived the last few years in New York City, Hyde might have emerged there and not yet been tracked down by the New York police. The city was so large, and the crime rate so enormous, that there were inevitably great numbers of crimes unsolved. Hyde could have been active in New York without the Jekyll part having yet come to the attention of the police.

All of his suspects had told him they had had no prior trouble with the law, and Sondgard was willing to accept the statements. They were too easily checked. If the Jekyll personality had been involved in any other case, even only in the capacity of witness, he would have said so, and he would have had a story prepared. To lie about it, when the truth was so easily obtained, would only be to direct suspicion at himself.

Which implied a Jekyll who knew about the existence and activities of Hyde, which wasn’t necessarily true. But if Jekyll didn’t know about Hyde, he wouldn’t have any reason to lie because he wouldn’t know there was anything to cover.

Besides, he thought gloomily, it didn’t necessarily have to be a Jekyll-Hyde situation at all. There could very easily be only one personality involved: the killer. Able to present a blameless face to the world, and then to turn around and commit the most brutal murders.

The thing to do was find out whether any of the four had ever had psychiatric treatment. He could put a request through to the police departments in their home towns, and also again to the New York City police department. With Will Henley, that kind of checking might be difficult; Henley was an Army brat, brought up here and there around the world. Well, if he’d had mental disturbances, his father would most likely have brought him to an Army psychiatrist, so Sondgard would send a request for information to the Army, too.

But all these things would take time, time, time. And the killer wasn’t giving them time. He wasn’t one of the old-fashioned slow-working homicidal maniacs who only killed once a month, when the moon was full or his wife had completed a menstrual cycle; this particular maniac had killed twice in two days. And, except for the brutality in both cases, the killings were not at all similar. One was a sex slaying, and the girl was strangled, and it took place in daylight. And the other was the killing of a middle-aged man, and he’d been tom to pieces, and it took place at night. In the first, sex had been the motive; but in the second, there wasn’t really any motive at all.

“If we could find out why he climbed over that gate,” Sondgard muttered to himself, “we might have him. He had to have a reason, no matter how crazy or unreal it was. He had to have a reason, and if we can only figure out what that reason was, we’d—”

He was talking to himself.

He said, “Gahhh!” and rose abruptly from the chair. Talking to himself. He had to finish this thing pretty soon, or they’d be carrying him off instead of the killer.

Talking to himself. Next, he’d be cutting out paper dolls.

Paper dolls. What if—?

Not paper dolls necessarily. But something. Maybe there’d be something, left behind by Hyde.

He made his decision, and strode out of the kitchen. Larry Temple and Mike Tompkins were both standing in the hallway, Larry looking pale and dazed, from a combination of his experiences of the morning and a lack of sleep, and Mike still looking sheepish because of yesterday’s fingerprint fiasco.

They had been that close. One fingerprint away, and Mike had blown it.

The thing was, the killer had made absolutely no attempt to avoid leaving fingerprints. He hadn’t worn gloves, and he hadn’t wiped any surfaces clean before leaving. That was probably another indication of his desire to be caught and stopped. But he’d been excited, nervous, tense, while killing Cissie Walker, and his fingers had been trembling. Smudged prints were everywhere, and none of them useful. Only one print had seemed like a good possibility; a right-thumb print smashed into the bar of soap the killer had used to write on the mirror. The soap was a pale green, and Mike had dusted it lightly with the black powder, bringing out the highlights of the print and seeing that it was probably a pretty good one, though they couldn’t be sure until the photo was enlarged. But then he’d set the bar of soap up to take the picture, and the soap had slipped away as soap will do, and unthinkingly he had lunged for it and grabbed.

It could have happened to anyone. Sondgard had told him so, and had meant it — though he couldn’t entirely hide his disappointment — but Mike hadn’t been able to accept the solace. “Would one of Garrett’s men have loused it up like that?” he’d asked.

No, probably not. Sondgard had had nothing to say.

Because if one of Garrett’s men wouldn’t have loused it up like that, then Mike should no longer feel responsible or take the blame on his own shoulders. It was Sondgard’s responsibility, the blame rested squarely on his shoulders, because it had been his decision not to call Garrett in.

If he’d called Garrett right away, yesterday, as soon as he’d learned the seriousness of the crime, would Garrett have cleaned it up by last night? Would Eddie Cranshaw still be alive?

No, not with the evidence so far. Not even Sherlock Holmes could have found the right man that quickly, and been sure enough to make an arrest.

Except that Garrett would probably have had the print.

If the print had been usable. It could just as readily have been no good at all, like every other print Mike had found. Mike had taken pictures of five different prints, and when enlarged none of them had been worth a damn. So maybe the thumb print on the bar of soap wouldn’t have been worth a damn either. But there was no way to know that for sure, one way or the other, so Mike was still looking sheepish this morning, and Sondgard would never know whether he had been to blame for Cranshaw’s death or not.

They had to get him. They had to get him soon, before he piled any more crimes on Sondgard’s conscience.

What about Garrett now? Why not call him in? In a way, Sondgard would welcome it, would be more than happy to have Garrett relieve him of the responsibility, but in another way he couldn’t do it. Pride was part of it, he had to admit that, and embarrassment at calling Garrett in so late to repair the botched job, but there was also Sondgard’s own stubbornness and his conviction that he was still better qualified than Garrett to catch this particular killer, because this particular killer was not going to be caught by fingerprints or lab work, this particular killer was going to be caught only by an understanding of human nature.

It was Sondgard’s baby, and he was stuck with it.

He came down the hall and said, “Anything out of them?”

Mike shook his head. “Not a peep.”

“They haven’t been told about Cranshaw, have they?”

“Nope. They still think it’s just that kitchen-table deal.”

“All right. Good. I’ll be right back.”

Sondgard slid open the door and stepped into the rehearsal room, closing the door again behind himself. Fifteen people sat on the folding chairs, their heads turned to look at him, their faces curious and troubled. Eleven men and four women. One of four of the men was the killer. Any one of the others could be his next victim.

Sondgard moved up to the front of the room, by the sofa and table, where under normal circumstances these people would be rehearsing their first week’s play right now. Well, maybe not right now; it was barely eight o’clock in the morning. Many of the faces out in front of him showed the marks of too-little sleep and too-rude an awakening. And none of these people had had breakfast yet, or so much as a cup of coffee.

Sondgard had arrived at the house with Larry Temple, having called Joyce to get in touch with Dave Rand and have him take over on the scene of the second murder. Doc Walsh was already there, and the ambulance would be arriving soon, and so would the state technical people. These last were a different proposition from Captain Garrett; since the town hardly had a crime lab of its own, state personnel and state facilities were automatically used for this facet of any local criminal investigation, whereas Captain Garrett of the state CID office couldn’t come in on the case unless requested by Sondgard. (It was unfortunate, Sondgard reflected, that the state technical assistance didn’t extend to the taking of fingerprints, but even a town the size of Cartier Isle could afford the powders and camera, and Mike Tompkins had received training in taking prints at the State Police Academy.)

At any rate, he and Larry Temple had come here direct from the Lowndes estate, both in the patrol car, leaving Sondgard’s Volvo back by the gate where the murder had taken place. Sondgard had seen the mess on the kitchen table, had questioned Mel Daniels and Mary Ann, got both their stories, and then had them rouse everybody else out of bed. They were all given time to wash and dress, and then they were assembled in the rehearsal room. They all knew about what was on the kitchen table, but none of them — except the killer — knew about the murder of Eddie Cranshaw.

Sondgard had made them wait in the rehearsal room, while he sat gazing gloomily at the kitchen table, not so much as a bit of tactical psychology but because he hadn’t been sure exactly what he would say to them or what he would ask of them. But now that they were in front of him, half-ideas and embryonic schemes were suddenly filling his head.

But one thing at a time. He began by saying, “You all know what’s happened. Someone last night smeared jam on the kitchen table and then wrote, ‘Bobby did it,’ in the mess he’d made. We can only assume that what was meant was that somebody named Bobby is the one who killed Cissie Walker. We’re also assuming that the same person was the one who left us that message. Are we wrong about that? Did the same person kill Cissie Walker and then leave us that message? Or is there someone here who knows who the killer is, or thinks he has evidence to prove who the killer is, and who left us that message because he or she is afraid to make an open accusation? If so, if whoever you are who left that message you are not the same person who killed Cissie Walker, you haven’t helped us. In fact, you’ve only served to confuse us. So I’ll ask you to come forward and straighten out the confusion. And if you’d rather not get up in front of everybody, I’ll be around here the rest of the day and you can come to me at any time.”

Only silence answered him, and an uneasy rustling and shuffling of feet. Sondgard took a deep breath, and went on to step number two. “In the meantime,” he said, “we’ve decided it’s necessary to make a thorough search of this house. That means, of course, a search of your rooms as well, and your possessions. If necessary, I can go to a judge and get a search warrant, but that would take time I’d rather not spend. I’d like your permission instead. Does anyone object to his room and possessions being searched? I promise you nothing will be disarranged, and certainly nothing will be stolen.”

Again, only silence.

“Then I have your permission, is that right? No one objects?”

Faces were turning, they were looking at one another, waiting to see if anyone would object, because who would object other than the killer? But no one spoke.

“All right,” said Sondgard. “Now, there’s one more point.” He hesitated, because what he was planning now was dangerous, could backfire badly if it didn’t work. And he hadn’t had time to think it out beforehand, since it hadn’t occurred to him until he was standing right here in front of these people.

Well, it was sink or swim.

“There’s one more point,” he said again. “We have what we believe is one good fingerprint. It’s a right-thumb print, and we got it from the cake of soap the killer used when he wrote, ‘I’m sorry,’ on the mirror. We’ve photographed the print and sent it down to the state capital for enlargement and copying. At the time, we still couldn’t be sure whether Cissie Walker’s killer was someone living in this house or not, so we asked that the thumb print simply be run through the normal check in the FBI files in Washington. But now, because of what happened last night, there’s no longer any doubt. So I’ve called the state police at the capital, and I’ve asked their assistance. They will be here at three o’clock this afternoon, with equipment and personnel to take the fingerprints of everyone living in this house. All we’ll have to do after that is match our thumb print against the prints we take this afternoon. I believe, therefore, that I can assure you that this whole business will be over by this afternoon, but between now and then none of you are to leave this building without my express permission.”

He paused, thinking over what he’d said, and preparing what he was to say next. The obvious flaw in his little lie was the fact that he intended to search the house. If they had such a great clue, and it was going to give them the killer at three o’clock this afternoon anyway, why bother to make the search? It was a question that might occur to the killer, and it had to be answered now. Also, in case this didn’t work out, it would be nice if Sondgard had left himself an out. So he proceeded to kill two birds with one stone:

“I told you that I believe this whole business will be finished this afternoon. But we can’t as yet be sure. I don’t know if any of you know much about fingerprints and their detection, but they are far less useful and far less frequent than detective stories might lead you to believe. The killer, as a matter of fact, left prints all over Cissie Walker’s room, but they were all smeared and smudged and useless, all except this one print on the cake of soap. Now, that looks like a good print to the naked eye. And it looks like a good print in a small negative. And it looks like a good print in a contact print from that negative. But we won’t really be able to tell if it’s a good print or not until we get the answer from downstate, until after the enlargement has been made. I would say right now that the chances are ninety-ten that it is a good print, and that we won’t need any more. But there is, I must admit, that one chance in ten that it won’t be a good print. Just in case, I intend to go ahead as though we had no print at all. We are dealing with a madman, and I don’t want to waste time, I don’t want to sit around an entire day waiting for one clue, if there’s even the remotest chance that the clue won’t turn out as good as we’d expected.”

Again he paused, and again he looked over what he had said. It sounded good to him, and he was a little surprised at his ability to lie extemporaneously. Maybe he’d chosen the wrong professions, maybe he should have been a lawyer. Or a politician; he could do television debates with the best of them.

He was pleased with his lie. It had a fullness to it. It was so full with details and facts, so ringed around with secondary truths, that he couldn’t see how anyone could challenge the primary lie.

It should work.

If it worked, someone would make a run for it before three o’clock this afternoon.

If it didn’t work, Sondgard had no idea what he’d try next.

Then he remembered The Three Faces of Eve again, his Jekyll and Hyde theory. What if Jekyll were in control right now, and he was standing up here threatening Hyde? Jekyll might not even know there was any reason to make a run for it.

But didn’t Eve’s secondary personalities have contact with the primary personality? As he remembered it, the primary personality knew nothing about the second and third faces, but they did have knowledge of her, and did have some awareness while she was in control.

It didn’t matter. Maybe the killer was a Jekyll and Hyde, and maybe he wasn’t. Maybe he knew what was going on, and maybe he didn’t. But at the moment it just didn’t matter; Sondgard had already committed himself.

He said, “That’s all for the moment. Now, I imagine you all want your breakfasts. Mrs. Kenyon won’t be working here for a while, and I don’t suppose any of us can blame her, so you’ll have to root for yourselves. We’ve already got our photos of the kitchen table, and we’ve finished with everything else in there, so you can have it back. I suggest the girls go out now and rustle up some breakfast for everyone. If you have extra, I could use some food myself.”

Mary Ann McKendrick spoke up, the first to break the general silence of his audience: “Is it all right for us to clean the table?”

“Yes. Go ahead.”

Tom Burns was next. “What about us boys? You want us to stay in here?”

“For just a few minutes, yes. I’ll have a few questions to ask some of you, individually.”

Sondgard stood at the front of the room a moment longer, though there was nothing else to say, and as long as he remained there no one else moved. Then he turned and walked toward the door, breaking the spell, and the four women got to their feet and trailed out of the room after him. They headed down the hall toward the kitchen, and Sondgard went over to Mike, who had motioned to him. “What is it?”

“There’s a wire-service stringer outside. Transworld Press. What do we do?”

“Tell him to wait a minute.” Sondgard went back, slid open the door again, and called into the low buzzing that had filled the room once he’d left it, “Bob, could you come here a minute?”

Haldemann got to his feet and came hurriedly across the room. He stepped out to the hall, and Sondgard slid the door shut again, saying, “Bob, our first reporter’s out front. You want to talk to him?”

“If it’s all right, yes.”

“It’s all right. But I don’t want anyone else in the company talking to him, or any other reporter.”

“I’ve already told them that.”

“Good. Another thing, I don’t want him told anything about what we’ve got in the works. The fingerprint, or searching the house, or anything like that. You can tell him all about the murder, and the names of the people in the company, and anything else along that line, but the investigation is private.”

“Of course, Eric. Anything you say.”

“Fine. I suppose he’ll have to have a statement from me, so I’ll go talk to him now, and then you can have him. Oh, by the way. Our belief that the killer is necessarily someone in the company is also private. As far as the press is concerned, the killer could be someone in the company, or someone in town, or someone who just passed through.”

Haldemann nodded. His expression was serious and worried; Sondgard had no doubt he would strain himself to do the right thing.

Sondgard left him in the hallway and went out on the porch to talk to the reporter, a burly red-haired man carrying a small sleek camera. “Shots of the buildings and grounds are all right,” Sondgard told him without preamble. “But shots of the people involved are out.”

The reporter seemed taken aback. He’d clearly expected a more gentle tone, or at least a hello to start things off. He said, “How come?”

“Because the investigation is still in progress, and I don’t want you in contact with any of these people but the producer, who’ll be out to talk to you in a minute.”

The man shrugged. “I’m not pushy, mister,” he said. “I’ll take whatever you give me, and thank you.”

“All right, fine.” Sondgard felt himself relaxing somewhat. He’d made himself far too nervous and tense with that little bluff he’d tried in there, and so he’d been more brusque than he’d intended with the reporter. He said, “I really don’t mean to chew your head off. It’s just that this thing isn’t over yet, and I don’t want more elements in it than I can control.”

“Do you have any leads?”

“Of course. We’re working on them.”

“But nothing for publication.”

“Not yet.”

“Could I have your name, sir?”

“Eric Sondgard. Captain Eric Sondgard, Cartier Isle Police Department.”

“I understand this is only your summer work, Captain, you’re a college teacher the rest of the year. Is that right?”

“That’s right. But I really don’t have time to be interviewed right now. I came out here mainly to ask you what may seem like a very strange question, but I’d like you to answer it anyway.”

“I’ll do my best.”

“Fine. Just what are you here to report on?”

The reporter frowned. “How’s that again?”

“What case am I working on?”

“Well— The murders.”

“Murders?”

“Yeah, the...” The reporter was now at a total loss. “The killing of the actress yesterday, and that private eye that got killed last night.”

Which was what Sondgard wanted to know; the red-haired man had already heard about the second killing. He said, “As a part of the investigation, I’ve kept the information about that second killing from the people inside, including the man who’ll talk to you. I don’t want you to mention it to him. Talk to him exclusively about the first murder. Understand?”

“No,” said the reporter, “but I’ll do it.”

“Fine. When you finish talking with him, let me know, and you can talk to Officer Temple, the first policeman on the scene at the second killing. He can give you all the information you want on that one.”

“Fair enough.”

“All right, good.”

Sondgard turned away, but the reporter called to him, and when he turned around again, said, “I’m the first reporter here, right?”

“Yes, you are.”

“I can do you a favor, Captain Sondgard, if you’ll do me one.”

“Such as?”

“Make me press liaison. I’ll get the facts from the people you let me talk to, and any other reporters who show up can talk to me. I’ll keep them from getting in your hair.”

“That would be fine. What’s the favor I do in return?”

“Give me first word when you get him.”

“I’m not sure that would be so easy to do.”

“Easiest thing in the world, if I’m press liaison. Just allow me to sit on the information ten minutes. That’s all I need to get my call in, and have Transworld first with it on the wire.”

“Is that legal?”

“Sure. It’s only unethical, but it’s legal. And how’s it going to get back to you? I’m the one sits on the information. You gave it to me to pass on, and I held it ten minutes. All I ask is you don’t notice how long I take to spread the word. Okay?”

Sondgard thought it over. It was certainly fair, a favor for a favor. And this red-haired man was the first reporter to arrive. And it would be a relief to know someone else was handling the reporter angle.

He nodded. “Okay,” he said. “And, what’s your name?”

“Oh, didn’t your officer tell you? I gave him my card. It’s Harry Edwards.”

“Harry Edwards. All right, fine. The producer’s name is Bob Haldemann. He’ll be out in just a second. You can talk with him in his office over at the theater.”

“Thanks.”

Sondgard stepped back inside, and said to Haldemann, “He’s all yours. Name’s Harry Edwards.”

“Right. Oh, Eric, about that thing in the kitchen — ‘Bobby did it’ — do I talk about that?”

“Yes, I think so. A simple description of the facts, and that’s it. Oh, that reminds me, something I forgot. I’ll go back out with you.”

The two men went out onto the porch, and Sondgard performed the introductions, then said, “The reason you’re talking to Bob is because he’s one of the people we’ve completely eliminated from suspicion. His time is totally accounted for.”

“Glad to hear it,” said Edwards. He grinned. “I don’t know as how I’d feel right, going into that empty theater with one of your live suspects.”

“You have no worries.”

Sondgard went back inside. “Larry, come here a second.”

Temple came over, looking more and more pale and bushed.

Sondgard said, “I’d like you to stick around just a little longer. When the reporter’s done with Bob Haldemann, he’ll want to talk to you about the second killing. Give him any facts he wants to know, but nothing about the investigation, right?”

“Sure, Dr. Sondgard.”

“You’d better sit down some place till he’s ready for you. You look ready to drop.”

“I’m okay.”

“I know you are. Mike, come on along with me.”

“Where we going?”

“To search the rooms. We’re going to take this place apart, piece by piece.”

“What are we looking for?”

“I don’t know. What would a madman have in his room? Paper dolls he’s cut out? A Napoleon hat? Maybe he writes notes to himself, too.”

“All right, we can try it.”

“That’s what I thought.”

Sondgard took two steps up the stairs, and then said, “Oh, damn! I forgot. The doors are all locked. Hold on a second.” He hurried back outside, and saw Haldemann and Edwards just going into the theater. He shouted, and they waited while he trotted across the gravel to them. He said, “Bob, have you got a general key? One for all the interior doors?”

Edwards said, “You’re making a search? What are you looking for?”

“Not yet,” Sondgard told him. “Don’t worry, I’ll keep my side of the bargain. Have you, Bob?”

“Yes, sure. In the office. Come on.”

They went into the theater, and Haldemann produced a skeleton key from his desk drawer. Sondgard brought it back to the house and he and Mike went upstairs to start searching. Larry Temple was sitting on the bottom stair, his eyes half closed.

After Sondgard/Chax left the room, they all started talking at once, all of them except the madman. He sat slumped in a folding chair, chewing on the inside of his cheek, trying to think.

He had a lot to think about. Sondgard/Chax was closing in on him. Sondgard/Chax was attacking him from everywhere, was giving him too many things to guard against at once.

The search. That was something to think about. He pictured his room upstairs, trying to see if there was anything in it that would help Sondgard/Chax.

Not the furniture. None of that was his, it all came with the room, it was all there when he’d moved in the day before yesterday.

Not the clothing or the suitcase. All of that belonged to the driver he’d killed; none of it could be traced back to Robert Ellington.

And what else was there in the room? Nothing.

Yes, one more thing. His copy of the play they should be rehearsing, with his speeches underlined. But that couldn’t be of any help either.

There was the clothing he’d worn last night. The shoes were still wet, for instance. But they were on the floor in the closet, and he had fresh dry shoes on now, and there was no reason to expect Sondgard/Chax to pick those shoes up. He would just open the closet and look in and see clothing hanging from the bar, and shoes on the floor, and that would be all. No reason to touch the shoes at all.

And even if he did, what of it? His shoes were wet. He could think of a story to cover that. He had— He had—

He had taken a shower. Last night he’d come home drunk with the others, and instead of going straight to bed he’d taken a quick shower, but he’d been so drunk he’d stepped under the water without taking his clothes off first. Then he’d taken them all off. It was as simple as that.

That would cover the rest of the clothing, too. The shirt and underwear and socks stuffed still damp into his laundry bag. The damp trousers hanging way back in the corner of the closet. None of the clothing had any obvious bloodstains, so they would have to accept his explanation. And there were plenty of people to testify that they’d all drunk too much last night.

So much for the search. There was nothing to find but some wet clothes, and Sondgard/Chax probably wouldn’t even notice them, and even if he did the madman had a sensible explanation for them, so the search wouldn’t be so terrible after all. Sondgard/Chax would just be wasting his time and his energy, that’s all.

But then there was the fingerprint. Now that wasn’t clever. He hadn’t thought about fingerprints at all, either time. Of course, Sondgard/Chax had admitted there was a chance the fingerprint wouldn’t be any good, but it was a small chance.

The business about the fingerprint was stupid. It was not clever. Not in any way. There hadn’t been any reason to write that note on the mirror; at this point he could hardly remember why he had wanted to do it at the time. And it had just been foolish not to remember fingerprints. There were so many things he’d forgotten, that he had once known, long ago, before the asylum. He had to be so careful, while he was relearning.

But what to do about the fingerprint? Surely they were watching the house, so it wouldn’t be either clever or safe to try to run away now. If there was any way to change his fingerprints between now and three o’clock this afternoon, he didn’t know about it.

A nine-to-one chance. That’s what Sondgard/Chax had said.

But was that right? Maybe it wasn’t a nine-to-one chance. Maybe it was a one-to-one chance. Maybe Sondgard was just hoping the fingerprint would be good, and was trying to bluff the madman into running away.

Why else would he be searching? If he had a nine-to-one chance, would he waste so much time and energy searching?

He’d admitted, admitted, that they couldn’t be sure about the fingerprint until they got the enlargement. So how did he know it was a nine-to-one chance?

It didn’t matter. The only thing to do was hope. Hope Sondgard/Chax had the odds wrong, and then hope the odds turned out not to favor all the Doctors Chax. It was the only way to handle this threat; wait to see if it turned out to be a real threat. Make no move at all before three o’clock. But if the men from the state capital did come at three o’clock, and did start taking everybody’s fingerprints, then that would mean the enlargement had turned out good, and then the madman would see to it that he escaped before his own fingerprints were taken. There would be a lot of milling around when the state men came, a lot of inevitable confusion. He could go out a side window, from the second floor, land on the dirt below, and get away.

So that took care of the second. The search, no real problem. The fingerprint, wait and see. But there still remained a third thing to think about, and that was the most dangerous of all.

Bobby did it.

Who had written that? Who had come downstairs after he had gone to bed, and written that in the jam he’d smeared on the table? Who in this group knew his secrets? Somebody, somebody. Somebody knew he was the one who had killed them; and somebody the same somebody the same sneaking somebody somebody knew his real name!

Was it possible? He didn’t know any of these people, he’d never met any of them before Wednesday, so how could one of them know so much about him?

He hadn’t written those words himself, he couldn’t have. He thought back to last night, and he could remember two times when he’d made aimless lines, scratched lines with his fingers, but he hadn’t been writing anything, not either time. Once was by the lake, just before he’d washed off the blood. And the other time was in the kitchen, after he’d smeared jam on the table. But he hadn’t written anything. There wasn’t any reason to.

(He didn’t ask himself why he’d smeared jam on the table; he didn’t think about that part of it at all.)

Somebody knew. That was the only answer. Somehow, some way, somebody knew.

But why do such a senseless thing? Either tell Sondgard/ Chax, or keep it quiet; but don’t just hint. What was the purpose?

To scare him? Could someone else be the agent of Doctor Chax, someone else instead of Sondgard? Could that be how it was done? And this was simply another of those meaningless and futile tests: Draw a picture of a man and a woman. What does this black blob look like? When I say a word, you say the next word that comes into your head. Read this story and then tell me about it: (A cowboy went to town and bought a city-type suit. His dog refused to recognize him, and actually tried to attack him, until he took off the suit and put his normal clothing back on.) “There was a cowboy, and a great big dog like a wolf, and he was named Wolf, and the cowboy and Wolf went downtown to the department store where they had the Santa Claus in the window that nodded his head and waved his hand...” And all at once it was a story about a dog that attacked a mechanical Santa Claus.

But why hadn’t Sondgard/Chax said anything about the other killing, the one last night? Was he trying to be clever again, was this more cleverness? They must have found him by now.

Even in the threats he didn’t make, Sondgard/Chax was dangerous.

If Sondgard was the agent of Doctor Chax. But that wouldn’t explain Bobby did it. And the only explanation of Bobby did it was that there really was an agent of Doctor Chax somewhere close, watching him all the time.

Sondgard closing in, narrowing in on him all the time. And now someone else, silent, watching him.

Who? How could he deal with Sondgard if he had to keep thinking about this somebody else? He had to find out who it was.

He looked at the faces. Ralph Schoen? The man had a vicious face, cruel enough certainly to be one of them. But he would be too direct, he wouldn’t be the type to tantalize this way. Not Schoen.

Not Alden March; too weak, and also too likely a candidate to be opposed to Doctor Chax rather than allied with him.

Not Arnie Kapow or Perry Kent; both were too obviously what they were, and nothing more.

Tom Burns? No, too cynical; Doctor Chax and his agents were all smugly and pompously sincere, sans any kind of humor.

An actor, then? The madman studied the faces, and his gaze came to rest on Mel Daniels.

Mel Daniels.

He was very young, yes, younger than the madman himself, but did that mean anything? They might have chosen someone so young purposely to allay his suspicions.

Mel Daniels had come here a full day late, as though they hadn’t known this was where to send him until after the madman had arrived here himself.

And it was Mel Daniels who “discovered” the body of Cissie Walker.

Yes! Yes! And it was Mel Daniels who “discovered” the writing on the kitchen table!

After writing it himself!

It all fit. Arriving late, “happening” to discover everything important. The madman nodded to himself, remembering last night; Daniels had stared at him while they were both with the group at the Lounge. Daniels had prodded him, asking questions about the false background, straining his memory of all that the dead actor had told him.

Daniels had been toying with him! Testing his “reactions,” the way they did, the dirty beasts! And testing his reaction again this morning, with this broad hint, this Bobby did it, this underhanded taunting.

So it was Daniels who had to be taken care of, Daniels and not Sondgard who was in direct league with Doctor Chax.

Well, both had to go. Daniels/Chax, because of what he had done and what he yet might do, and Sondgard, because he was coming too close.

And the sooner the better.

Karen Leacock, the skinny one, came to the door to tell them breakfast was ready. They all went to the room next to the kitchen where the long table was — the regular kitchen table, where the message had been “found,” wasn’t big enough for all of them at once — and the madman joined them there. He had made some discoveries while thinking things through, and he had come to some decisions. As a result, his appetite was very good. He took four pancakes for a starter, and set to.

Sondgard came in a few minutes after the rest of them had started, and sat down at the place they’d left for him, midway down the table, on the other side from the madman. From Sondgard’s tight and tired look, the madman knew he’d found nothing. Not even the wet clothing. The madman watched his persecutor — his two persecutors — watched them closely and covertly while he himself finished his first four pancakes and forked three more onto his plate.

Sondgard was eating slowly, grimly, plodding through the breakfast, just mechanically shoveling the food into his mouth at slow and regular intervals. His expression was dour; it was obvious he had no taste for the meal, but was trying in vain to put on a good show.

The madman was pleased. Sondgard had been bluffing about the fingerprint. The chances weren’t ninety-ten at all. They were probably fifty-fifty, maybe even worse. Otherwise, the failure of the search wouldn’t have depressed the policeman so much.

But Daniels, now, Daniels. Daniels was eating with gusto, swilling cup after cup of coffee, eating his pancakes even faster than the madman himself, and all the while talking to Mary Ann McKendrick, sitting next to him on the right. Daniels waved his knife and fork around as he talked, and Mary Ann McKendrick laughed sometimes at the things he was saying, and once she looked over at the madman, laughing the while, and all at once the madman understood.

She was laughing at him!

Daniels was telling her about him! About the “experiment,” the “research,” and all about his fascinating “reactions.”

The madman clutched his knife and fork, and the food in his mouth turned to wet gray cardboard. He controlled himself with effort, forced himself to remain in his seat, kept himself from lunging across the table at them to slit both their throats. But that would be stupid, that would be the sort of stupid thing he had allowed himself to do before he’d been sent to the asylum. It was because he had followed his impulses regardless of the consequences that he had wound up in the asylum in the first place. He had learned since then, and he was determined to profit by his learning.

Do not follow your impulses regardless of the consequences.

Wait.

Follow your impulses only when you can be sure there will be no consequences.

Plan.

Act.

Always follow your impulses; do not let them make you be untrue to yourself.

But be clever.

So this was not the time. He couldn’t take care of them now, no matter how much he felt the need, no matter how harshly the girl’s idiot laughter grated on his ears, no matter how vicious were Mel Daniels’ whispered comments about him.

And to think that once he had wanted to befriend that girl!

His attention was distracted from Daniels/Chax and the girl by a conversation that had begun at the other end of the table. Arnie Kapow had asked Sondgard something — whether the killer had to necessarily be one of the people present — and Sondgard was answering, “There isn’t any doubt any more, Arnie. Not after last night. The house was locked up tight. That message on the table had to be left by somebody living here.”

Tom Burns said, “I thought you said maybe somebody else did it, not the killer. Somebody who knows something.”

“That’s possible,” Sondgard admitted. “But I don’t think it’s probable.”

I could tell you, the madman thought to himself. You’d be surprised. Daniels/Chax wrote it. The madman felt the urge strong within himself to blurt that out, to see the expressions on all their faces when he told them what he knew and why he could know it, but he held the urge in check, recognizing it for what it was. It was the destructive urge, the same urge that makes a man looking out a high window or over the railing of a tall bridge suddenly want to jump off. The urge was his enemy, not a part of his true self, and so could be and should be ignored.

Still, he had to say something. The urge was that strong in him. He searched for something safe to say, and finally said, “But wouldn’t he have run away by now?”

Sondgard turned his head and looked at him. He turns his head, thought the madman, like a snake going to strike. His eyes are cold, blue flecked with gray. His face is bony. I think he is Death.

Sondgard said, “I don’t think he would. He thinks he’s safe, because we haven’t caught up with him yet.”

Ralph Schoen took over the conversation. “He’ll try now, won’t he? He’s got to get away before that fingerprint gets here.”

Sondgard’s death’s-head turned again. “He may try,” he said. “On the other hand, I said there was a small chance the print won’t be any good, and he may decide to take the gamble, and stick around. I hope he does. I wouldn’t want him running around loose. But if he does take the chance, if he does stay, I’m pretty sure we’ll have this whole thing wrapped up this afternoon.”

Sondgard’s voice was deep, but with faint treble overtones in it, like some announcers on the radio. Some of the Doctors Chax had had voices like that, and faces like that.

Breakfast was ending. They were still asking Sondgard questions, and he was still answering each in the same slow careful manner, his thin bony head turning to face each new questioner, his gray-flecked eyes studying each face with solemn care.

He is dangerous, thought the madman. I must deal with him, too. First, Daniels/Chax and his bitch. Second, Sondgard.

Then all at once Daniels spoke up. He said, “Captain Sondgard, is it all right for Mary Ann and I to take off for a while?”

Sondgard didn’t like the question, the madman could tell. He hesitated, and finally he nodded and said, “All right. Where are you going, into town?”

“No, for a boat ride.”

“All right. But—” His head moved, and he gazed generally at the others. “But,” he said, “if anyone else wants permission to leave the house for a while, please don’t ask me here. I’ll stay here awhile; you can come ask me privately.”

He doesn’t want to refuse me in front of everyone, the madman thought. Does that mean he knows, after all?

And now Daniels was going out of the house, out of reach. The coward! He must know that he’d been seen through, that the madman was on to him. And now he must be afraid, he must be terrified, as always they grew terrified once it was too late. So he was taking the idiot girl, and he was fleeing the house.

And Sondgard was letting him! Didn’t that prove they were in league?

The madman felt confusion growing within him, like fog creeping up through a crack in a wood floor. Who were his enemies, which of these people, and how many of them? And how much did they know, and to what degree were they in league with one another?

Was Daniels really the agent, or was it someone else, someone he hadn’t even thought of?

Did Sondgard know the truth, and was he holding off to accommodate the experiment of Doctor Chax? Or was he actually at a loss, waiting for a fingerprint that might not be any good to him at all?

Were Sondgard and Daniels working together, or did Sondgard have no connection with Doctor Chax at all, or was he working in combination with an agent of Doctor Chax who was not Daniels and whom the madman had not yet uncovered?

There were too many questions, too many uncertainties. Sondgard had said nothing about the second killing; he might have discovered the wet clothing and be saying nothing about that. There was no way to guess whether the fingerprint would be a danger or not. There was no way to be sure how much Daniels/Chax had told Mary Ann McKendrick, or if he had really told her anything at all, or if he had already told other people.

Doctor Chax himself could be outside the house right now, this very minute, watching through a television set, waiting for the conclusion of the experiment. They had one-way windows at the asylum, there was no secret about that. But for here it would probably be closed-circuit television, with the tiny cameras hidden in light fixtures or inside the walls.

The madman looked up at the ceiling fixture, centered over the table, and wondered: Am I looking into the eyes of Doctor Chax? Is he looking down at me right now, and smiling?

Too many uncertainties, too many uncertainties.

Within him, that being, that creature, that thing was stirring again. The one who had taken him over and killed the man with the flashlight. The one of whom he had faint and distant earlier memories. He was moving again, right now, stirring, rising, reaching out as though to take control.

The madman fidgeted, frightened. He couldn’t lose control now, this mindless being within him would give the whole game away, would be obvious and blatant and stupid. There was no cleverness in it, no thought beyond the rage of the moment. The madman couldn’t lose control now without losing everything.

Only till three o’clock, he thought. I have to keep control until three o’clock. Then I’ll find out about the fingerprint, and I’ll know what to do next, and the being will settle back down again. But I’ve got to hold on until three o’clock, or I’m going to do something.

Something.

It was a very ugly rowboat. Old, to begin with, and then painted by someone with more paint than sense. White paint had been slopped on, inside and out, thick and lumpy, reminding Mel of the woodwork in old and run-down Manhattan apartments, with layer after layer of paint on them, all mottled and bumpy. This rowboat was like that, in white that gleamed blindingly in the sun.

And red. The nut who’d painted this boat had possessed a can of red paint, too, and this was a nut who would let nothing go to waste. So the boat had been painted white all over, in thick globs and chunks of paint, and then over the white there had been smeared two or three layers of red trim. The top edge of the boat’s sides was painted red. The seats were painted red. The oars had been dipped in red paint.

It was a very ugly rowboat. But it was the only one they had.

“It belonged to the people who used to own the house and bam,” Mary Ann explained. “We sort of inherited it.”

“I didn’t think you’d own it on purpose.”

“It floats, that’s the important part.”

They were standing on a short narrow wooden pier, jutting out over the water from the very edge of the Black Lake Lounge property. Behind them was the blacktop Lounge parking lot, extending away to the left, and some scrubby field going off to the right to meet the nearest stand of trees. Beyond parking lot and field wound the road, and across the road stood the sparkling theater and the moldering house.

A sudden idea came to Mel, and he voiced it: “They painted the boat with what they had left over from the house.”

“I did.”

“You did?”

She looked down at the boat with a fond sad smile. “It isn’t a very good job, is it?”

“You should have painted the house instead.”

“It is kind of ugly, isn’t it?” She turned and looked back at the house. “Somehow, it looks uglier now than it used to. It looks more like a haunted house, now.”

“It is. Climb in.”

He held her arm as she stepped down carefully into the boat, then handed her the bag with the lunch they’d packed before leaving. She put it down — the bottom was dry — and then sat down on the aft seat. Mel untied the line, dropped it in the boat, and climbed down to sit between the oars. He pushed the boat away from the pier, and Mary Ann, looking past his shoulder toward the house, said, “Bob meant to have the house painted this year. He hoped to make enough money to do it. Now maybe we won’t have a season at all.”

“What about Sondgard and his fingerprint?”

She shook her head. “I think he’s bluffing,” she said. “Don’t you?”

“I hope not. But I did get the same idea, yes.”

“Can you imagine if this just went on and on? All summer long. We couldn’t work, we couldn’t put on any shows, but nobody would be allowed to leave. All summer long, just sitting around in that gloomy house there, with nothing to do and nowhere to go.”

“Yeah, fine. Let’s talk about something else. If you want to talk about the house, how come it’s there at all? This is supposed to be a real ritzy neighborhood.”

“I know.” She smiled again, more girlishly this time. “That was the old Eggstrom place. For years and years it was just an eyesore.”

“It still is.”

“You should have seen it when I was a little girl, before the Eggstroms gave it up. The barn looked worse than the house, then. And they had junk all over the yard, every which way. People kept getting up petitions against them and everything.”

“How come they managed to move in there in the first place?”

“Well, they were there first. When they came here, there wasn’t anything at the lake at all. The town down at the other end, of course, but that’s all. That house is over fifty years old.”

“Doesn’t look a day under two hundred.”

“That was the first house ever built out at this end of the lake. Circle North there used to be a dirt road, and it was called Eggstrom Road, because the only place it went was the Eggstrom farm. Then, when all the estates went up, a lot of people wanted to buy the farm, just to tear down the house and barn, but the Eggstroms wouldn’t sell. Then, when the old man died, his son sold it to Bob, and he started the theater. Now the house isn’t an eyesore any more, it’s just quaint.”

“That’ll be the day. Where am I rowing, anyway?”

“Anywhere you want. This was your idea.”

He looked over his shoulder. “There’s an island out there. Is that private property?”

“No, nobody owns that. Nobody lives there or anything.”

“Why not? These estate people go for privacy, with all the fences and everything, they ought to go nuts over an island.”

“It’s too small, I think, and most of it is pretty marshy. And when we have a storm I don’t think anybody’d want to be out on that island.”

Mel looked up at the sky, but the good weather was still with them, with no sign of a break. The sun was all alone in a pale blue sky.

He didn’t row hard. He was in no particular hurry to get to the island, or anywhere else. His whole purpose was to be alone with this girl, and that purpose had already been gained. At breakfast this morning they had started to talk together for the first time as friends, the ice having been broken by the combination of Mary Ann’s confession to him of her secret desire and their having shared this morning’s discovery together. In the breakfast table conversation the normal interest he already had in her as an attractive female was heightened, and he’d cast around for a suitable excuse to get off in a corner somewhere with her, finally coming up with the idea of their getting a boat and going for a row on the lake. Was there a boat they could use? He’d asked her, and she said as a matter of fact the theater itself had a boat, a little rowboat, which any member of the company could use. And would she like to go for a boat ride, seeing it was such a beautiful day outside, and etc., and they could use a change of pace from the gloom and doom indoors, and she could be his guide to whatever natural wonders the lake had to offer, and so on and so on. She would, she said, be delighted.

Now his only question was — which was paramount in her mind, to be away from the house or with him? The question loomed large in his mind, but he didn’t ask it.

The day really was beautiful, away from the shadow of the house. The pale blue sky above, the darker blue of the lake water all around them, the rich green of the tailored forest surrounding the lake, the darker green of the mountains all around this shallow valley and the darker, fainter tones of the mountains farther away, blending toward a misty purple at the horizon.

A long distance away across the smooth water, toward the town end of the lake, were a number of small sailboats, cats, with varicolored sails. One with a bright orange sail crossed in front of one with a bright purple sail, making a moment of garish beauty. Other cats way across the water there had red sails and blue sails and yellow sails, while two sloops, stately by comparison, wore sails discreetly white. The bright hues of the cats on the dark blue water, framed by the dark green of the shore to left and right, made him think of a pool table, with the balls scattered in a random pattern. This was a similar beauty.

He expressed the comparison, and Mary Ann didn’t get it at all. “A pool table?”

“Sure,” he said. The oars were at rest for a moment, the little boat bobbing gently on the water. Mel shaded his eyes with his hand and gazed down toward the cats. “Just like a pool table,” he said.

“For heaven’s sake,” she said. “A pool table. You have a real knack for the poetic image.”

“You’ve just never looked at pool tables,” he told her, irritated because his estimation of her had dropped, and he was afraid this outing with her was doomed to failure.

“Now, be honest, Mel,” she said. “Have you ever, even once in your life, looked at a pool table and said to yourself, ‘That reminds me of a lake’?”

“Well, of course not, I never saw anything like—”

“It isn’t even the right color. Pool tables are green, and this lake is blue.”

“Just forget it,” he said. “Never mind, just forget it.”

“And besides, pool tables are covered with smoke, and they don’t—” She stopped abruptly, and clapped her hand to her mouth, and her eyes widened. She stared at him that way for a few seconds, while he wondered what disaster had just struck, and then slowly she lowered her hand from her mouth, shook her head, and said, “I’m sorry, Mel. I really am.”

“Well... sure. That’s okay.”

“I always do that, always. My brother calls me Lucy, Miss Busybody of the Year. You know, from Peanuts?”

He found himself grinning, as the irritation faded away. “So it doesn’t look like a pool table,” he said. “Maybe that’s exclusively a masculine image or something.”

“No, I knew what you meant, with the different-colored sails and all, it’s just I always do that. I get so bossy sometimes, and picky.”

“It’s the director in you.”

She smiled wanly. “Maybe it is.”

“Tell me something,” he said, because it was time to change the subject away from pool tables.

“All right, what?”

“When are you going to New York?”

“Oh. I don’t know, Mel. Sometime.”

“Why not go this fall? Right after the season ends.”

“If there is a season.”

“Forget that for a minute. This fall. Right?”

“I don’t know, Mel.”

“Announce it,” he told her. “Maybe not yet, while this other thing is hanging over everybody’s head, but after it’s all straightened away and we get down to being a summer theater for a change. Tell everybody, the whole company. Tell them, ‘I’m going to New York this fall. If you can get me some introductions, or find me work some place, I’d sure appreciate it.’ Do that, will you?”

She frowned, and chewed on her lower lip, and gazed down at the water rippling past the side of the boat. “I don’t know, Mel,” she said.

“If you announce it now, you’ll have to go.”

“I know.”

“And these people will help you, if they can. I wish I could help you. I mean it, I do. But look at me, I mean, I’m just starting out, too. I could use some contacts myself.”

She looked up at him and smiled again. “It takes courage to do what you’re doing,” she said. “To go away from home, and start from the very beginning. I’m not sure I could do it.”

“You think it over.”

“I will.”

He unshipped the oars and started rowing again, then looked over his shoulder. “Where is that damn island, anyway?”

“Straight ahead. I’ll steer you.”

“Okay.” He looked back the way he had come, past Mary Ann. “You can’t even see the theater any more,” he said. “Or the house.”

She twisted around in the seat to look in that direction. “I’m glad,” she said.

“Same here.” He pulled on the oars, then angled them out of the water and held them high and dripping. “I’ll make you a deal,” he said.

“What?”

“Out of sight, out of mind. For the rest of the day there isn’t any theater any more, and there isn’t any house, and there isn’t any maniac.”

“Wonderful,” she said.

They smiled at each other, and Mel rowed them toward the island.

After breakfast, Sondgard went to work to deploy his forces, just in case the killer did fall for the bluff and try to get away before three o’clock. He was pretty sure now that the bluff wasn’t going to work; the qualification he’d made about its not being one hundred per cent sure it was a good print had been enough to remove the sting. But he hadn’t had any choice. He’d had to leave himself an out, because by God he didn’t have a fingerprint. But in covering himself he had drained the effectiveness of the scheme, so it had been a waste of time to start it in the first place.

And Arnie Kapow hadn’t helped matters any, asking him at the breakfast table if he expected the madman to try to escape. Answer yes, and he would confirm the madman’s belief that all escape routes were closed, and it would be best to stick around and see if the fingerprint was a threat or not. Answer no, and make the bluff obvious to everyone in the county. So he had tried answering yes and no simultaneously, but he had little hope that that would work.

Still, there remained the chance — slim though it might be — that the killer would try to escape. Sondgard had to work within that possibility, and so he had to see to it that all avenues of escape were blocked, while at the same time he wanted it to appear that one or more exits were not blocked.

He was going to have trouble. To begin with, he didn’t have enough men. Including himself, the Cartier Isle Police Department boasted a full complement of four men. One of them, Larry Temple, was dead on his feet, and would have to be relieved and taken home before he fell over, and that left three. Even if all other police business — that is, traffic control and general alertness — were ignored, he still had only three men, including himself. And the house, like most houses, had four sides. Right off the bat, he was one man shy.

In addition, he himself had other things to do, and couldn’t cut his movements by giving himself guard duty. So that further reduced his forces to two.

There was, of course, always Captain Garrett. Captain Garrett had so many men he didn’t know them all by name. Captain Garrett could cordon the house, bring up searchlights and megaphones, grill the suspects, search for clues—

No. There were too many reasons not to call in Captain Garrett at this point, and not the least of them was that Sondgard would be embarrassed to describe his little attempt at bluff to Captain Garrett until after he knew whether it was going to work or not. Once the killer was captured, Sondgard would be able to tell Captain Garrett the whole story, but not yet. His mistakes and blunders and hesitations would have lost their bite then, when the killer was safely behind bars. Right now they loomed too large; Sondgard wanted no professional on the scene to disparage him.

He told himself he should rise above personal feelings, that he should act out of logic rather than out of emotion, but he just couldn’t do it. The argument that this was a case for a humanist rather than a detective had grown pretty threadbare by now; Sondgard was supported now only by a grim tenacity, a determination not to be made an utter fool of.

So he was dependent upon himself, and the forces under his command, which consisted of an ex-Marine who preferred his uniform to his job, a twenty-year-old college student long overdue for sleep, and a man who hadn’t thought about anything but boats for the last twenty years.

And, of course, a houseful of interested participants, fourteen of whom were surely his willing allies, with only one adversary against the whole crowd of them.

He would do what he could with what he had. Some other day, he could think it all out and find out what he should have done.

He spoke first to Loueen Campbell, who had her own car, that white Continental convertible parked out in front of the theater. He asked her if she would do him the favor of driving Larry Temple home, since neither Sondgard nor Mike Tompkins could spare the time to do it.

“I’ll be glad to,” she said, and smiled her rather hard and brassy smile. “If you’ll do me a little favor back.”

“If I can.”

“Let me stay in town awhile and do some shopping.” The smile grew satiric. “Until shortly after three o’clock, say?”

Sondgard smiled back, though he had to force himself a little. “Fine,” he said. “Your time is your own.”

“Bless you, Eric.”

Loueen left, taking with her a Larry Temple now more asleep than awake, and Sondgard next phoned the office and talked to Joyce. “Can you get hold of Dave?”

“I told him what you said before, about staying off his boat and near a phone. He promised to stay right there at home.”

“Fine. Call him and tell him to come on out here, but not to wear the uniform. He should park in front of the theater, and wait. Sooner or later I’ll see him there and come out and talk to him.”

“All right. Will do.”

But Sondgard’s mind was still working, editing and correcting his plans even as he implemented them. “No, wait,” he said. “I won’t come out. He’s to park in front of the theater, where he can see both the front and the right side of the house. He’s just to sit there, and watch the house. If anyone leaves the house, I’ll go out on the front porch with him, with whoever’s leaving. If anyone goes out of the house without me escorting him as far as the porch, Dave should honk his horn three times, and keep the guy from getting away. And he should be careful because it may be somebody who’s already killed twice.”

“All right, I’ve got it. How are you doing, Eric?”

“Miserably.”

“Would an expression of confidence from this end do anything for you?”

“It would if I didn’t know you were a prejudiced witness.”

“Now, that’s what I call egotistical. Phone me when you get him, Eric.”

“Will do.”

Next, Bob Haldemann. Sondgard took him to one side and said, “I want to talk to you privately a minute, Bob.”

“In my room. Come on.”

Haldemann’s room was on the first floor, across from the rehearsal room. Sondgard sat in the room’s lone chair, and Haldemann sat on the edge of the bed. The shades were drawn and the bed unmade, giving the faint impression that this was somehow a sickroom.

Sondgard said, “I have news for you, Bob, and I also have favors to ask of you.”

“Anything, Eric, anything at all.”

“Fine. The news first. Number one, our madman didn’t just write that message in the kitchen last night. He did other things as well. I’m pretty sure the message doesn’t refer to the killing of Cissie Walker at all, but to the second killing.”

“Second killing?”

“You know the Lowndes place. Somebody climbed over the gate there last night and beat one of the guards to death.”

“Eric!”

“Wait a second, there’s more. Then he went down to the lake, right next to the Lowndes house, and scrawled the name Robert in the dirt three times. Then he turned around and came home. He didn’t enter the house, he didn’t do anything else. All he did was climb over the gate, kill a man, write his name three times, and go home.”

“Robert,” said Haldemann thoughtfully. “And in the message here, he wrote Bobby. Is he trying to pin it on me, Eric?”

“I don’t think so. It wouldn’t stick, and he’d have to know that. We’re up against a lunatic, Bob, and that’s what makes it so tough. There’s no figuring out what he means, or why he does anything. I keep having the feeling that if I could only understand why he climbed over that gate in the first place I’d be a lot closer to him than I am now.”

“But you are close, aren’t you? At three o’clock—”

“That’s the rest of my news. There isn’t any fingerprint.”

Haldemann blinked in confusion. “There what?”

“There was a fingerprint, or there may have been, we’re not sure. But we never got a picture of it. Mike bobbled it. It wasn’t his fault, just one of those things that could happen to anybody. I’m bluffing, Bob. I’m trying to scare our killer into making a break for it.”

“What if it doesn’t work?” Haldemann had paled considerably; obviously the bluff had worked with him, and he was now feeling lost without the comforting reassurance of that fingerprint. If only the killer was believing it as thoroughly.

“I’ll worry about that at three o’clock,” Sondgard told him. He leaned back in the chair. “Both these pieces of news,” he said, “are confidential for the moment. The fingerprint, obviously. And the second killing, because you and Mike and I are the only ones in this house who know anything about it, except the killer himself. I may be able to use that, though I admit I don’t know how.”

Haldemann nodded. His fingers were rubbing together with a dry sound. He said, “And then there was a favor.”

“Yes. I’m having the house covered on the outside, but I want to avoid any more trouble on the inside. I want you, and two or three of the others, to help me keep an eye on our suspects.”

“Of course.”

“I’ve got it limited to four. Now, I don’t want our killer to believe it’s impossible to get out of this house, so I wouldn’t want somebody following each suspect everywhere he goes. But just to keep an eye on the doors, and the staircases, and the stairs to the basement. If you see somebody in the process of sneaking out, don’t try to stop him, just come tell me. I want as early a warning as possible, and Mike and Dave won’t know he’s on his way till he’s already out of the house.”

“All right, Eric.”

“Arnie could help us. And Perry Kent.”

“Ralph?”

“I’d like Ralph to put on a game of business as usual. Start a rehearsal.”

“All right. What about Tom Burns?”

“He’s one of my suspects.”

“Tom? For heaven’s sake, Eric!”

“I’m going strictly by my timetable, Bob, and by everybody’s statements. The timetable eliminates you, and the Daniels boy, and Arnie and Perry, and Ralph and Dick and Alden. And the four women are eliminated, of course. That leaves four, and to tell you the truth none of them looks very likely. But Tom Burns is one of the four. He’s a heavy drinker, and he has been for years, which means you can’t say definitely when he will or will not snap. He had a lech for the Walker girl. The name written on the kitchen table was Bobby, and if Tom is suffering from some sort of Jekyll and Hyde insanity like—”

“That was just a story, Eric!”

“The Three Faces of Eve wasn’t just a story. If Tom had a split personality caused by all the heavy drinking, then the second personality might very well decide to call itself Bobby Burns.”

“That’s fantastic. I’m sorry, Eric, but it really is.”

“This is all fantastic, Bob. The killings, the messages, all of it. The work of a sick mind. Obviously, whoever he is he’s capable of looking normal. So it could be any one of the four, and it could just as easily be Tom.”

Haldemann shook his head dubiously. “I suppose you’re right,” he said, “but I just can’t see Tom as a murderer. Or a maniac.”

“All right, neither can I. I can’t see any of the other three, either. That’s Ken Forrest, and Will Henley, and Rod McGee.”

Haldemann gazed at him thoughtfully, digesting the names, and then shook his head. He said, “And that’s all, Eric? Aren’t we forgetting somebody?”

“Who?”

“I just can’t— Those three boys are all — they’re normal, Eric. I’ve talked to all three of them.”

“So have I.”

“If it’s one of those four, I don’t see how you’ll ever catch him. I couldn’t conceive of any of them doing things like this. It would show, Eric, it would have to.”

“Obviously, it doesn’t.”

“Mm.” Haldemann thought that over, too, and then said, “It does have to be somebody here, doesn’t it? Yes, I know, it does, we’ve gone over that already.”

“Yes.” Sondgard got to his feet. “I have more to do,” he said.

“How much do I tell Arnie and Perry?”

“Who the suspects are, that’s all.”

“All right.”

“And they’re to keep it to themselves.”

“You know them. If either of them says ten words in a week, it’s a miracle.”

“I know.”

Sondgard next went to find Mike, who was still watching the front door, and told him to take up a new station behind the house, where he could watch the rear and right side. And if he were to hear Dave Rand honk his horn three times, to come around front on the double. And if he ran into any trouble, to fire one shot, but not to shoot at any people without asking a lot of questions first.

It had taken him a while to get things set up, and he had the uneasy feeling that the whole crowd could have snuck out of the house by now, so he next wandered through the house, taking a private head-count, and was relieved to find everyone present and accounted for. He went out on the front porch to wait for Dave Rand to arrive and take over the surveillance out there.

When Dave showed up, Sondgard waved to him and went down off the porch and over to the theater. But he didn’t stop to talk to Dave, but kept on by and went into the theater.

Harry Edwards, the wire-service stringer, was happily ensconced in Bob Haldemann’s office, seated at Bob’s desk and talking on the telephone. Three other men helped fill the small office, sitting around on tables and the other chair. From the way they leaped at him the second he came into the room, Sondgard knew they were also reporters. He waved them away, saying, “Nothing to say. Not yet, not yet.”

He went over to Edwards, who hurriedly finished his conversation and hung up the phone. Sondgard said to him, “I hope those are collect calls.”

“Well, sure. TP isn’t cheap.”

“So you say,” said one of the other reporters.

Sondgard cut into the joking before it had a chance to get well started. He said, “Are these three it so far?”

“The sum total,” said Edwards. “There’ll be more, though.”

“All right. Pass the word. All reporters are to stay here in the theater. I don’t want any of them wandering around outside the house, peeking in windows. I’m having the house watched, and not all my men can tell a suspect from a reporter, so there could be some confusion. A reporter might even get shot by mistake, and then I’d have to make a public apology. So keep them here, right?”

Edwards laughed aloud, saying, “I like you, Professor. Your word is law.”

“Fine.”

Sondgard left the office and went back out to the sunlight, noticing what he’d missed before, the sign Harry Edwards had stuck to one of the glass doors: Press Information — Inside, Turn Right.

Sondgard thanked God for Harry Edwards. He nodded to Dave again, a big red-faced blond man who looked awkward and cumbersome on dry land, and went back into the house to take up the vigil some more.

“What time is it?”

Mel looked at his watch. “One-thirty,” he said.

Mary Ann looked out pensively over the water. “An hour and a half,” she said.

“We weren’t going to talk about that,” Mel reminded her. He pointed. “Look out there. Where’s the theater? Can you see it?”

“No.”

“Nothing but pool balls. Look, there goes an orange one, way down there by the Lounge. What’s the orange one? Five, isn’t it?”

“I don’t know.” Her voice betrayed her; she was still distracted, thinking of the other.

Mel got to his feet. “Come on, come on. We were going to explore.”

“All right. I guess we better leave our shoes off.” She turned her back on the lake and looked at their island. “It gets pretty swampy.”

“What about snakes?”

“Boy, are you the cheerful one.” She smiled at him, regaining her humor, and shook her head. “No snakes. And no rabbits or squirrels or anything else, either. We’ve got the place to ourselves, unless some kids come out.”

“Kids come here?”

“Sometimes. I used to come out here sometimes when I was a little girl. There’s an old broken-down shed around on the other side, if it’s still there. We played house in it, and the boys played war. It was a pillbox, and the ones inside were Japanese and the ones outside were Marines.”

“Let’s see this pillbox.”

“I’m not sure it’s even there any more. Come on, we’ll go around the island first, and then explore the interior later.”

Mel automatically took her hand, and they started off together, making their way along the water’s edge. There was no real beach anywhere around the island; the lake water was wearing the island slowly away, so at the point where land met lake there was usually only a sudden drop of a foot or two, and thick mud, and weeds and bushes growing right down to the edge, so they had to move slowly, and keep in a little from the water.

They had taken their time coming out here, floating around on the water till the sun grew too high and too hot, and then they’d found one of the few places where the ground sloped up gradually from the water, with a small clear grassy patch surrounded by the bushes and weeds, and there they’d landed. There were trees close by, gnarled and stunted, but big enough to offer a little shade. They’d sat a long while in this shade, talking amiably and casually together, telling each other anecdotes of their past life, getting to know one another a little better. Around one o’clock they’d eaten the lunch, and then digested a while, and now at last they were moving again.

Mel was not at all sure of himself. Mary Ann seemed open and honest and friendly, and she had no objection to being here alone with him, but he wasn’t at all sure just how much that meant. Because she was gradually assuming more and more importance to him, he wanted to make no rash or ill-advised moves, wanted to avoid inadvertently driving her farther away from himself.

So he hadn’t yet kissed her. He’d been thinking about it, more or less constantly, ever since they’d landed here, but as yet he hadn’t even begun a move in that direction.

He argued with himself about it, telling himself that after all she had come out here with him, and after all under circumstances like this she had to expect him to kiss her, didn’t she? But God alone knew what went on in the minds of girls; she might not be expecting to be kissed at all. She might be thinking of the two of them now as sister and brother.

On the other hand, what if he didn’t try to kiss her, and she’d been waiting all day for him to make the first move? Wouldn’t that be just as bad? If she did want to be kissed, and he didn’t kiss her, wouldn’t that drive her away from him just as surely as if she didn’t want to be kissed and he did try?

It was a problem.

And, damn it, it wasn’t always a problem. He’d had his share of girls, by God. Not all of those stories he’d told in the Lounge last night were false. He could make out as well as anybody, all things considered, and since living in New York had more than one night slept in a bed not his own. So why the big problem, all of a sudden?

He thought back to his earlier conquests, as he walked along hand in hand with this problem girl, trying to figure out what he had done those times that he was not doing now, or in what way the girl had been different, or the situation different.

Well, the situation was different enough, with this cloud hanging over everybody’s head. But to a certain extent they were out from under that cloud right now, even if only temporarily, and that should help equalize things.

The difference was, when all was said and done, this time he cared. He’d known the girl not yet twenty-four hours, but there it was just the same. It’s easy to be a make-out artist if you don’t give a damn about the girl; just go ahead and try. If she goes along with you, you’re in. And if she slaps your face and stalks off in a huff, small loss.

That was the difference. This time, big loss.

He thought about it all the way around the island, which, despite the slowness of their progress, didn’t take long. The island was very small, about fifty yards by thirty, and before he knew it they were back where they’d started, with the white-and-red rowboat bobbing at the end of its line, and the orange cat still tacking back and forth way down there by the Lounge.

“That’s enough for me for a while,” she said. “Let’s sit down and rest a minute.”

“Fine.”

He sat down next to her, and all of a sudden there was nothing to say. He’d done fine with the small-talk bit up till now — a lot better than with anything else — but all of a sudden there weren’t any more words. Maybe because of the realization he’d come to on the trek around the perimeter of the island: small loss versus big loss. Whatever the reason, right now he had absolutely nothing left to say.

So he kissed her.

Just like that. Out of desperation, more than anything else; the silence had been getting uncomfortable. For lack of anything better to do, he’d kissed her.

It was a short kiss, and not exactly a ball of fire. Then he sat back a little ways, looking at her, listening to something thudding in his chest, and wondering what her reaction would be.

She smiled. “I thought you’d never do it,” she said.

Quarter after two, and nothing was happening. Sondgard paced through the house, back and forth, back and forth, from front door to kitchen to front door to kitchen. From behind the closed doors of the rehearsal room came the drone of the rehearsal; Ralph Schoen was in there with Dick Lane and Alden March, who had three scenes alone together. Schoen couldn’t work with any of the others, because Loueen Campbell was in so many scenes, and he didn’t want to have someone else reading her lines. He had some sort of mystical director’s reason for this, having the actual actors present for the early rehearsals, so Sondgard hadn’t argued the point. But it left all four of his suspects at loose ends, here and there throughout the house.

In a way, that might be good. The killer would have nothing to distract his mind. He would have to think about the three-o’clock deadline. He would have time and leisure to worry.

But it was now quarter after two, and still nothing had happened. It was time, Sondgard thought, to apply a little extra pressure. So he broke off his pacing and went in search of his suspects.

He found Tom Burns first, sitting in the dining room at the long table there, a bottle and glass in front of him. He was drinking slowly but steadily, and he was doodling with a pencil on a sheet of paper, drawing sleek, highly chromed automobiles. He looked up when Sondgard entered, and waved cordially. “Greetings, Hawkshaw. Get yourself a glass.”

“No, thanks.” Two hours ago, they’d all been gathered in this room for lunch, a meal as uneventful as the morning’s, but even quieter. There had been no questions for him that second meal. Sighing, he sat down across from Tom and said, “You know Eddie Cranshaw very long?”

“Eddie who?”

“Cranshaw. You know, the skinny guy with the missing fingers.”

Burns frowned in concentration. As always, his mobile face exaggerated the expression, making it seem unreal. Or was it unreal? It was so hard to tell what a maniac’s face would look like.

Burns at last shook his head. “I don’t know the guy at all,” he said. “Cranshaw? With missing fingers? What a description.”

“You know, Everett Lowndes’ friend.”

“Is that the guy owns the place down the road?”

“That’s him.”

“I met him once, but I don’t know any of his friends. We borrowed a chandelier from him.”

“A what?”

Burns laughed. “Yeah, doesn’t it? A chandelier. Remember, three seasons ago, The Apple Seed? That dog of a thing. You saw it, didn’t you?”

“It sounds familiar.”

“So it needed a chandelier. The whole family keeps talking about the chandelier, remember?”

Sondgard nodded slowly. “It’s coming back to me,” he said.

“Well, this guy Lowndes had a spare chandelier in his basement, and he loaned it to us. Weighed a ton. We had to borrow Anderson’s truck, it wouldn’t fit in the wagon.”

“And that’s the only time you met Lowndes.”

“I suppose he’s come to the shows sometimes, I wouldn’t know.”

“That’s right.” Sondgard rubbed his palm against his forehead. “To think,” he said. “Three murders. I can hardly believe it myself.”

Burns looked startled. “Three? I only know about one.”

Sondgard looked at him, blinking in pretended befuddlement. “Did I say three? I hope to God that wasn’t a presentiment.”

“Eric, dear heart, are you trying to be cute with me?”

“I couldn’t be cute with anybody right now, Tom. I’m exhausted. I just wish three o’clock would get here.”

“Do you really think I might have bumped off poor Miss Cissie Walker?”

“Who knows who did what?” Sondgard got to his feet. “I’m liable to go take a nap on Bob’s bed,” he said. “I’ll see you later.”

“Have fun, Hawkshaw.”

As Sondgard went out, Burns poured himself another drink.

Would this work? He had no idea; but he was willing to try anything now. He would go through the same routine with each of them, hoping to catch some sort of reaction from the names, or the description of Eddie Cranshaw, or the “mistake” in the number of murders. Or, at the very least, to rattle the killer a little more, convince him that Sondgard was getting closer.

He went out to the hall and to the stairs and started up, intending to rouse out one of the other three, when he met Ken Forrest coming down. “Ah, there you are,” he said. “I’ve been looking for you.”

“For me?” There was no fear, or guilt, evident in Forrest’s eyes. He was, in fact, smiling helpfully, eager to be of assistance.

“I was wondering how long you knew Eddie Cranshaw.”

“Who?” Forrest glanced up the stairwell, as though expecting to find someone named Eddie Cranshaw up there. “He’s not somebody here, is he?”

“No, he’s Everett Lowndes’ friend. With the missing fingers.”

If Forrest’s baffled smile was phony, he was the most accomplished actor in the building. “I just don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said.

“You don’t know Everett Lowndes?”

“Well, gee, I don’t know, maybe I do.” He scratched his head in a boyish gesture; he seemed more outgoing than he had yesterday, probably because he’d been here longer now and was beginning to loosen up. “Would I know him from New York?”

“No, I don’t think so.” Sondgard returned his smile — he still might be the killer, so the pretense had to be maintained — and said, “Don’t mind me, I’m just tired. Maybe it wasn’t you at all that knew Eddie Cranshaw. Maybe it was Rod McGee knew him, and I’ve got my facts wrong. After three mur—”

But the boy didn’t let him finish. He said, “Are you kidding, Captain Sondgard?” The baffled smile was back on his face, as strong as ever.

Sondgard’s brows came together. “Kidding about what?”

“What do you mean, maybe Rod McGee was the one knew him?”

“But—”

Sincerity and bewilderment on his face, Forrest patted his own chest, saying, “For Pete’s sake, Captain Sondgard, I’m Rod McGee.”

As soon as he said it, the madman knew he’d made a mistake. For one awful second of vertigo, he was completely lost, swirling down in a whirlpool, as helpless and unknowing as an infant, even losing his balance on the stairs and starting to fall blindly and unknowingly downward...

And then it all came rushing back. Who he was. Where he was. How he had come to be here, and what had happened to him here, and what events had led to this last irrevocable blunder.

The being had come over him again, just after lunch. It had been growing and growing all morning, gaining strength from his increasing panic as the three-o’clock deadline neared. The conviction had strengthened in him that Daniels knew all, that he was indeed the agent of Doctor Chax, and that Sondgard knew as well, that Doctor Chax had set three o’clock as the time for the end of the experiment, and that at that time they would all swoop down on him at once: the Doctors Chax, Daniels, Sondgard, the state police, the male nurses, everyone, all of them, the whole world.

Until, almost gratefully, he had succumbed, he had abdicated, and the being had taken over, blunt, pragmatic, mindless.

And had become someone else!

Memory surged back into his mind, and understanding, even while comprehension was slowly coming over Sondgard’s features, even while Sondgard was stepping back from him, opening his mouth to cry out.

The madman leaped!

Batter! Batter! Close the gray-flecked eyes, and run!

He was over the crumpling Sondgard, at the door, out and away. The hunter’s horn sounded, and again, and a third time. Shouts went up. The pack was baying at his heels.

He ran flat out, with total physical effort, straight as an iron rod, and all at once the lake was in front of him again, glinting now in sunlight, and he kept running, white sprays of water crashing out away around his pistoning legs, till he was in too deep to run, the water clung to his legs, and he dove forward into it.

Behind him, the hunter’s horn sounded again, and then the flat dead cracks of shooting. Pistols, guns. Bullets.

He dove beneath the surface, hiding away in the cold depths, pushing, clawing his way through the water, farther and farther from shore, until his lungs were on fire and he had to surface again.

He didn’t look back. He surfaced for one scant instant, long enough to expel the dead and burning air, drag into his lungs the new cold air, see the flash of orange ahead of him, and submerge again.

Toward the flash of orange. Against all the dullness of blue and green, there had been only that one flash of orange. Not questioning it, only accepting and driving forward, thrusting forward, he clawed through the yellow-green water toward where he had seen the flash of orange.

He surfaced again for more air, and it was closer, much closer, and now he could see it was a sail. He was far from shore, close to the tiny boat with the orange sail. He submerged once more.

This time, before he had to surface, he saw undulating ahead and above him the curved bottom of the boat. Clamping his mouth shut against the need to breathe, he scuttled onward, arms and legs flailing and thrashing, under the boat and up at last on the other side.

His hand came up, clutched the side of the boat. The other hand followed. He pulled himself up, and rolled over the rail, and fell on the couple sleeping entwined together, nude and golden on a pale pink blanket.

There was no question, no hesitation. They were struggling up from their sun-sleep, and in a moment they would begin to make noise, and tell the Doctors Chax where their victim hid. He struck the girl with his right fist, twice, hard straight downward slams against her face, and the freshly opened eyes misted and reclosed. His left hand was already on the man’s throat, clutching as though to life itself. His other hand came over.

The man thrashed on the bottom of the boat like a giant fish, his hands clawing at the hands around his throat. But the madman clung, and clung, and clung, and slowly the giant fish died.

Then the unconscious girl. She did not awaken, nor struggle. And he felt no carnal desire for her, her nudity meant nothing to him. Since that one time, when everything had gone wrong, those desires had never come back to him at all. He was by now too remote from living things to retain still the instinct of life to renew itself.

Moving carefully, revealing himself over the boat’s rail as little as possible, he tilted them up and over, lowering them slowly into the water. The bodies trailed down into the yellow-green darkness, floating downward, arms waving good-bye, the girl’s fair hair floating out and up away from her head, streaming down after her in great beauty.

Alone. Safe. In a new haven. The madman looked about himself.

There was a Thermos jug with a plaid exterior, half full. He tasted, and it was sweet lemonade. There was clothing, his and hers, scattered around the bottom of the boat, as though they had undressed in great haste and distraction.

His own clothing was once again sodden. He stripped it all off, threw it all over the side. That clothing would mark him now, as the clothing he had worn in his escape from the asylum would have marked him. No longer could he be Ken Forrest, and the attempt to be Rod McGee had been doomed from the start.

He couldn’t let that being take over again. It was dangerous, it couldn’t plan, it did stupid and wasteful things.

He tried the man’s clothing on, but the shoes were far too small. The trousers fit him at the waist, but were too short in the legs. And the shirt was too small. So he had nothing now but trousers.

He peered over the railing, looking back toward the gleaming red theater. Was there pursuit? He could see none. But this little boat with its orange sail could not be a haven for long. He had to find a more permanent refuge, at least until tonight. Under cover of darkness he could escape again. With a new name, and new identification papers. The dead man, according to the papers in his wallet, had been named Frank Marcangelo.

The madman — Frank Marcangelo now — peered over the railing, searching for refuge. The shore was dark and green, but all of it estates, all patrolled by guards with guns and cars.

He saw the island.

Sondgard stood in the doorway, looking at the body of Rod McGee sprawled across the bed. “All right,” he said. “All right.”

There was a cut beneath his right eye, where Ken Forrest had slashed him with his fingernails, trying to gouge his eyes out. There was a heavy pain in the back of his head, where he had hit it on the floor when he was knocked down.

His face was ashen. His eyes were cold, and bleak. His face seemed bonier, thinner than before.

He had let this happen. He had caused this to happen. His bluff had worked, had flushed the madman out, but at this cost.

All right. This was an end on it. No more. There was a rabid dog loose in the district; he would be cut down like a rabid dog. Cut him down first, pity him afterwards.

Sondgard turned away and hurried downstairs. Mike Tompkins was at the wheel of his pretty car, gunning the engine in impatience. Dave Rand had already gone on ahead, to get the launch ready. Joyce Ravenfield had been telephoned, and had probably already called Captain Garrett. Before sundown, this whole area would be cordoned. There would be searchers everywhere. The rabid dog would no longer have it all his own way, aided and abetted by a blundering stupid egotistical part-time cop.

Sondgard got into the police car, and Mike backed it quickly around in a tight hard circle, and jolted it forward onto the road. He said, “What’d you find?”

“McGee’s dead.”

“Jesus Christ Esquire on a crutch.”

“Shut up and drive.”

Sondgard wasn’t happy with Mike Tompkins now. He came close to hating Mike Tompkins now, partly because he was close to hating himself now and therefore was close to hating the whole world, and partly because Mike Tompkins was all bark and no bite. He went away and learned how to take fingerprints, and when he’s handed the one fingerprint in his life that’s important, he mashes it with his big stupid hands. He spends hours every day shooting at targets out on the practice range, and when for once in his life he’s shown an important target, the bobbing receding head of that rabid dog, he misses. A bragging, fat-head, big-chested, uniformed idiot.

He’s almost as bad, thought Sondgard grimly, as I am.

They rode in silence, Mike at least driving like a man who knew how. The siren wailed, the car careened around the curves, the red speedometer needle in its trembling never dropped below eighty.

They burst into town, across the stunned intersection at Broad Avenue and onto Circle North, and Mike took the dirt turn-off on two wheels. The car shuddered to a stop at the foot of the pier where Dave Rand already had the launch’s engines growling.

It was not a new launch, but Dave kept it painted and shining, the lettering crisp on its cabin. Through local ordinance, it was the only motor-powered craft allowed on this lake. Sondgard and Mike ran out on the pier and jumped onto the launch, and Dave shouted at them from the wheel to loose the lines.

After the mad scramble to get to the launch, the next hour and a half was slow and dragging anticlimax. Dave roared the launch down to the farther end of the lake, where the madman had gone in, and they crossed back and forth, back and forth, searching the shore through binoculars, searching this area of the lake. They didn’t concern themselves with the island; it was too far away for a man to have swum it.

At four o’clock, the first state police cars appeared at their end of the lake, and Sondgard through his binoculars saw Captain Garrett standing at the water’s edge, near the Lounge, waving to him. He turned to Dave. “Go on in to shore.”

They couldn’t get the launch in to the short pier where the theater’s rowboat had stood, but there was a longer pier behind the Lounge itself. Dave eased the launch in next to it, and Sondgard and Mike threw the lines to two uniformed state policemen, who held them while Captain Garrett came aboard.

He was a bluff and hearty man, invariably cheerful of manner, surrounded by an aura of fantastic patience and competence. He shook Sondgard’s hand and said, “You’ve got a rough one this time, eh, Eric?”

“Do you want to hear it now?”

“If it’ll help.”

Sondgard told it quickly, sketching in what the madman had done, and what he had done in retaliation, outlining his own blunders as clearly as possible. But Captain Garrett immediately reassured him, saying, “Don’t go putting on a hair shirt, Eric. You were up against a lunatic. A normal killer now, somebody who kills for a reason, you can almost always track one of those fellows down. But a lunatic now, that’s a horse of a different color. I think you did just fine. You flushed him out in a day, didn’t you? Couldn’t ask for better than that.”

“Two people died who shouldn’t have died.”

“You thinking about that fingerprint? Now, don’t go putting a lot of hope in one lone fingerprint off a cake of soap. Just listen to me, I’m making up poems. But take my word for it, Eric, that little slip with the soap could have happened to anybody. And it probably wasn’t a print worth a damn anyway. Soap’s too soft, it blurs the outlines.”

“Rod McGee is dead,” Sondgard said bitterly.

“That boy would probably of been killed anyway. Him or somebody else. He got killed because you flushed this Forrest fella out. Now, if you hadn’t of flushed him out, how many people would of been killed? Maybe this same Rod McGee, plus a whole lot more. Don’t you go getting mad at yourself, Eric, you did this just fine. I can’t think of anything I’d of done different, and there’s one or two excellent things you did I wouldn’t of even thought of.”

Sondgard remained unconvinced, but he let the conversation lapse because they were wasting time. They agreed that Captain Garrett would take charge of the search on shore, and Sondgard would stay on the launch. Forrest had undoubtedly crawled onto land somewhere by now, but he might just try heading back into the water again if Captain Garrett’s men got too close to him.

They spent a little while setting up a radio connection between the launch and one of the state police cars, through the nearest state police substation and Joyce Ravenfield back at the office. Then Captain Garrett left the launch, and they headed out into the lake again.

Four o’clock. Four-fifteen. Four-thirty.

A flash of color kept itching the corner of Sondgard’s eye. A flash of color, an irritant. He kept trying to concentrate his attention on the shoreline and the near water, and this flash of orange color kept intruding on him, until all at once his mind was full of it.

Orange. A bright orange sail out beyond the madman’s bobbing head, when Mike had been shooting and missing. And now, a bright orange sail...

He turned, squinting, peering for it. Down by the island. Stopped there, down by the island.

It didn’t have to mean a thing. Somebody out for a sail, and taking a break on the island.

But the madman had disappeared. And that orange sail had been down at this end of the lake before.

Sondgard hesitated. But one more blunder now, and he didn’t know what he’d do with himself. He turned to Dave. “Go on over to the island,” he said. “Let’s just take a look at the island.”

It was a one-room shed, as old as the hills. Half the roof had rotted away, part of one wall had fallen outward, and if there had once been flooring, it was now all gone. The windows were blank rectangles in the standing walls, and there was no door in the doorway.

Mel stepped inside, gazed around, and said, “Charming.”

“I hoped you’d like it,” she said. “The servants are off today, so we’ll have to rough it.”

“In appointments like this, who could complain?”

They were both feeling very giddy, and completely unaware of the passage of time. They’d spent a long, long while doing a lot of necking and very little talking, and had stopped only when it had become obvious to both of them that within the next minute they must either stop or mate. The spell broken, they were nervously hysterical with one another, laughing too much, touching one another gingerly and trying to make believe that they were all calm inside.

They’d gone swimming again, for the cooling influence of the water, and then had spent a while just lying on the ground, smoking and talking idly. They got around to Mary Ann’s future again, and this time she agreed that she probably would go to New York this fall, and he would introduce her to everybody he knew, because who knows, somebody might know of a job for her. They talked it over and decided she should ask Bob Haldemann for some acting jobs in the plays this summer, so she could qualify for Equity membership and then try her hand at acting when she got to the city. She couldn’t very well expect to walk into New York and be given a job as a director, but if she could act even fairly decently she might get some work and meet some people, and once again, who knows?

The sun had climbed to the top of the sky and then slid halfway down the other side, so that now it was facing them, shining hot and yellow in their eyes, finally forcing them to move on. “I still haven’t showed you the shed,” she reminded him.

“I’m game,” he said. “Let’s go.”

So they picked their way in through the shrubbery, the ground marshy and oozing beneath their bare feet, and came to the shed. They played a nonsense game here, making it up as they went along, gradually becoming Cynthia and Reginald in an English sentimental comedy, drinking imaginary tea from imaginary cups and telling one another how much they would miss one another while she was being a missionary in Ceylon and he was back with his outfit in Inja.

Then a voice said, “Doctor Chax.”

They turned, and Mel smiled with surprise. “Ken! What are you doing here?”

The madman came into the room with a stick.

Chax.

The madman had come to the island. Had crawled from the little boat with the orange sail, had rested awhile on the wet ground, exhausted from the unfamiliar labor of steering a small sailboat across open water, exhausted more from the turmoil raging inside his head.

Chax.

All his beings were active now, all his selves, commingled and confused together. Even the artificial ones, the ones he had assumed with conscious knowledge, for conscious purposes. All mixing together, all babbling at once, all in mortal terror of extinction.

Chax.

The sun beat down, baking his body, drying the sweat that sprang constantly to his burning forehead, covering his eyes with orange haze. Once again — as always and always — he was alone and exposed, the bright light of the sun beating down from above, pointing him out to his enemies, and the flat empty water all around. All around this time, encircling him, holding him while his enemies crept closer.

Chax.

Up on his feet, the madman moved. Aimless, directionless, goalless, only driven to move by the knowledge of pursuit and by the thrashing flailing shrieking inside his head. Moving on around the perimeter of the island until he had come to a small grassy spot at the water’s edge, and a gleaming white rowboat with red trim bobbing there, floating at the end of a thick rope.

Chax.

On the island. Somewhere on the island. Someone was on this island, and who could that someone be but Chax? He must have a headquarters, he must have a hidden lair, some place from which his orders beamed, some place in which he could watch his television pictures, direct the persecution and the torture and the experimentation on Robert Ellington, Robert Ellington, who had been chosen from all the world as his special victim, the particular guinea pig, the lone opponent.

Chax.

Here he must be, and here the madman would find him. Find him, seek him out, search out the entrance to his underground lair, his burrows and caverns, track him down and smash him once and for all in his own fortifications. And then, with the brain gone, could the limbs go on? The persecution would have to end, the hunters would have to give up their search.

Chax.

The madman groped inward from the water, crawling now on all fours, searching for the entranceway. He came upon a gnarled and stunted tree, and ripped from it a dead branch to use as a club. Then he crawled on, looking for his enemy.

Chax.

At last he heard voices, and knew he had been right. At long last, to succeed, at long last to win through, at long last to be given peace eternal! He moved toward the sounds of the voices, crawling low against the ground, not wanting to give himself away, not wanting the enemy to know how close he had come already, how much closer he would be before long.

Chax.

The structure loomed ahead of him, cleverly camouflaged. He inched toward it, his streaming face streaked with mud and sweat, his hands and forearms muddy from the crawling, his bare feet brown with mud, the too-small trousers caked with mud.

Chax.

He reached the corner of the structure, edged around it, closer, seeing a window ahead, and inching toward it.

Chax.

And stopped beneath the window, and raised his head, and gazed in upon them there.

Chax.

And saw it was Daniels/Chax, who he had known to be Chax, from the beginning.

Chax.

And moved farther, to the doorway, and straightened, the club gripped in his hand.

Chax.

And entered, speaking his name.

Chax.

And Chax fell away from him, frightened.

Chax.

The fear in his eyes.

Chax.

The fear in the eyes of the woman.

Chax.

And the club was raised.

Chax.

And framed in the window stood Sondgard/Chax, a pistol in his hand.

The madman’s head moved, back and forth, and he growled and mumbled in his throat, not knowing which was the head and which only the limb, which to kill to destroy the other.

And Sondgard/Chax in the window said, “I have only one thing to do right. I have to do just this one thing right. And this is it.”

And the pistol spat oblivion.

Dr. Raymond Peterby said, “Thank you,” and hung up the telephone. His fingertips came together to form a little tent, and he gazed out from the warm small lighted space around his desk, toward the darkness of the darkest corner of the room.

It was night, now. Beyond the draped window, the night was dark, except for the garish brilliance of the spotlights around the maximum-security building. But in here, in this office, there was only the soft light from the desk lamp gleaming on the dark polished wood of the desk top, and soft darkness in all the corners.

We have so far to go, thought Dr. Peterby sadly. So much education to do. How little they understand our work, what we are trying to do here. How little they try to help us.

Outside, it is still the Middle Ages, so far as mental science is concerned. The layman looks on the mentally ill and sees only danger and viciousness. He does not see the potential locked up inside that sick mind. He does not see the possibilities for unlocking that potential, healing that sick mind, restoring yet another healthy citizen to the world.

The layman sees only danger, and his only thought is to kill.

They didn’t have to kill Robert Ellington. The man had great potential, a brilliant mind, great talents. To waste such a man, to throw him away like rubbish, to sacrifice him to general ignorance, was a crime. Shot down by some ignorant brute, and of the two, the slayer and the slain, which had the greater potential for society?

Dr. Peterby noticed the tent he had made of his fingertips, but for once he didn’t promptly pull his hands apart. For once, he didn’t care. For once, he was happy to admit that yes he would like to crawl away from the world and hide. Away from any world that so mistreated as valuable a one of its creatures as Robert Ellington.

Dr. Peterby was very sad.