She nodded brightly. “And while you’re there, go down in the cellar and pick up a copy of one of the magazines on the cellar shelf. It is, if I remember correctly, Tropical Adventure Tales for October, 1939, and there is something on page twenty-six that you simply must read. The district attorney will be interested in it later, but right now you must read it out loud to Mr. Wayland, after you have him here.”

Inspector Piper stared at her, hard. “On the level?”

She nodded. “Cross my heart.”

The Inspector hesitated, shrugged, and then suddenly went into action. As soon as he had left the office, Miss Withers picked up the telephone. “Inspector Piper wants you to locate Lieutenant Bartz,” she said sweetly to the man at the police switchboard, “and ask him to come down at once . . . because there’s good news for him!”

Then she calmly sat down, having sowed the wind, to await the whirlwind. The hands of the clock were at quarter to five when the cavalcade arrived—first the Inspector, then George Wayland fuming and spluttering between two uniformed patrolmen, and finally a pair of plainclothes detectives, one of whom bore a copy of a battered pulp magazine with a lurid cover.

Wayland saw Miss Withers, and bowed. “Now I begin to see—” he began bitterly.

“Not yet, but you will,” the Inspector promised. “Sit down, Mr. Wayland, and I’ll read you a bedtime story—out of a magazine which four witnesses saw me take out of your cellar. Let’s see—page twenty-six—here it is.” Piper cleared his throat. “‘I peered through a tangle of vines past Ali, my trusty gun-bearer—”

Wayland yawned. “What is this, Inspector? Isn’t this cruel and inhuman treatment or something?”

“‘—past Ali, my trusty gun-bearer,’” continued Piper determinedly, “‘and there by the flickering light of the jungle fires I saw the Witch-men dancing their ceremonial dance of death. Their bodies were painted in hideous, grotesque colors, and as they chanted they raised their arms to the vast looming statue of Hanuman, the monkey-god. . . .’”

Miss Withers noticed that Wayland had stopped yawning. In the background Lieutenant Bartz, with Inga clinging to his arm, came into the room and stopped stock-still near the door.