Carol said slowly: "Perhaps we are crazy!"

"I daresay. Yes, I daresay we are. Anyway we soon shall be . . . I suppose some people would say we are already. Here we are calmly planning, in cold blood, to kill our own mother!"

Carol said sharply: "She isn't our own mother!"

"No, that's true."

There was a pause and then Raymond said, his voice now quietly matter-of-fact: "You do agree, Carol?"

Carol answered steadily: "I think she ought to die—yes . . ." Then she broke out suddenly: "She's mad . . . I'm quite sure she's mad . . . She—she couldn't torture us like she does if she were sane. For years we've been saying: 'This can't go on!' And it has gone on! We've said, 'She'll die sometime'—but she hasn't died! I don't think she ever will die unless—"

Raymond said steadily: "Unless we kill her . . ."

"Yes."

She clenched her hands on the windowsill in front of her.

Her brother went on in a cool matter-of-fact tone, with just a slight tremor denoting his deep underlying excitement: "You see why it's got to be one of us, don't you? With Lennox, there's Nadine to consider. And we couldn't bring Jinny into it."

Carol shivered. "Poor Jinny . . . I'm so afraid . . ."

"I know. It's getting pretty bad, isn't it? That's why something's got to be done quickly—before she goes right over the edge."

Carol stood up suddenly, pushing back the tumbled chestnut hair from her forehead. "Ray," she said. "You don't think it's really wrong, do you?"

He answered in that same would-be dispassionate tone: "No. I think it's just like killing a mad dog—something that's doing harm in the world and must be stopped. This is the only way of stopping it."

Carol murmured: "But they'd—they'd send us to the chair just the same . . . I mean we couldn't explain what she's like . . . It would sound fantastic . . . In a way, you know, it's all in our own minds!"

Raymond said: "Nobody will ever know. I've got a plan. I've thought it all out. We shall be quite safe."

Carol turned suddenly round on him. "Ray—somehow or other—you're different. Something's happened to you . . . What's put all this into your head?"

"Why should you think anything's 'happened' to me?" He turned his head away, staring out into the night.

"Because it has . . . Ray, was it that girl on the train?"

"No, of course not—why should it be? Oh, Carol, don't talk nonsense. Let's get back again to—to—"

"To your plan? Are you sure it's a good plan?"

"Yes. I think so . . . We must wait for the right opportunity, of course. And then—if it goes all right—we shall be free—all of us."

"Free?" Carol gave a little sigh. She looked up at the stars. Then suddenly she shook from head to foot in a sudden storm of weeping.