This joker was wearing dark-brown coveralls, a woolen-lined army fatigue jacket and a fur-lined, dark-plaid hunter’s cap. There wasn’t but one joker looking like this outside on this bitter cold night.

“No, it ain’t true,” the joker said to himself. “Either I ain’t me or what I seen ain’t that.”

While he was trying to figure out which was which a big black sedan screamed around the corner with its bright lights splitting open the black-dark night.

It was a Buick sedan, and it looked familiar. But not nearly so familiar as the woman he’d seen a short time before in the golden Cadillac. However, now the freak with the coonskin cap who had been driving the Cadillac was driving the Buick.

All of it was so crazy it was reassuring. He bent over the handlebars of his motorcycle and began laughing as though he had gone crazy himself.

“Haw haw haw.” He laughed, and then began talking to himself. “Whatever it is I is dreaming, one thing is for sure—ain’t none of it true.”

Chapter 3.

The switchboard in the precinct station was jammed.

The switchboard sergeant relayed the reports to Desk Lieutenant Anderson in a bored, monotonous voice: “There’s a woman who lives across the street from the convent says murder and rape taking place in the street...”

Lieutenant Anderson yawned. “Every time a man beats his wife some busybody calls in and says she’s being raped and murdered—the wife, I mean. And God knows some of them could use a little of it—the busybodies, I mean.”

“...another woman from the same vicinity. Says someone is torturing a dog...”

“Tell her we’re sending an officer over right away,” Anderson said. “Tell her dogs are our best friends.”

“She hung up. But here’s another one. Claims the nuns are having an orgy.”

“Something’s going on,” Anderson conceded. “Send Joe Abrams and his partner over to take a look.”

The sergeant switched on the radio. “Come in, Joe Abrams.”

Joe Abrams came in.

“Take a look along the south side of the convent.”

“Right,” Joe Abrams said.

“Patrolman Stick calling from a box on 125th Street,” the sergeant said to Anderson. “Claims he and his partner, Sam Price were attacked and unfooted by a flying saucer some one has released in the neighborhood.”

“Order them to report here before going off duty for an alcohol test,” Anderson said sternly.

The sergeant chuckled as he relayed the order. Then he plugged in another call, and his face went grim.

“Man giving his name as Benjamin Zazuly, calling from the Paris Bar on 125th Street, reporting a double murder. Says two men dead on the sidewalk in front of the bar. One a white man. A third man unconscious. Thinks he’s Casper Holmes....”

Anderson’s fist came down on the desk, and his lean, hard face went bitter. “Goddammit, everything happens to me,” he said, but the moment he had said it he regretted it.

“Get the other two cars over there,” he directed in a steady voice. The veins throbbed in his temples, and his pale-blue eyes looked remote.