Then, noticing two bright spots of color on the table, I went across to examine them closely and felt more than ever as though I had stepped straight into a surrealist painting. I was looking at two rounded conical shapes each about two inches in length. Both were striped like candy canes, one in maroon against a white background, the other in thinner brilliant red stripes against an opalescent amber.

“Did Drake,” I asked, “collect seashells, too?”

“No.” Garrett scowled in a worried way at the shells. “But I once did. These are mollusks, but not from the sea. Cochlostyla, a tree snail. Habitat: The Philippines.” He turned his scowl from the shells to me. “By the way, just who are you?”

“The name is Ross Harte.” I added that I had had an appointment to interview Drake for a magazine article and then asked, “Why is this room sealed as it is? Why is this girl dressed only in—”

Apparently, like many medical men, Garrett took a dim view of reporters. “I’ll make my statement,” he said a bit stiffly, “to the police.”

They arrived a moment later. Two uniformed prowl-car cops first, then the precinct boys and after that, at intervals, the homicide squad, an ambulance interne, a fingerprint man and photographer, the medical examiner, an assistant D.A. and later, because a millionaire rates more attention than the victim of a Harlem stabbing, the D.A. himself, and an Assistant Chief Inspector even looked in for a few minutes.

Of the earlier arrivals the only familiar face was that of the Homicide Squad’s Lieutenant Doran—a hardboiled, coldly efficient, no-nonsense cop who had so little use for reporters that I suspected he had once been bitten by one.

At Dr. Garrett’s suggestion, which the interne seconded, the girl in the bathing suit was taken, under guard, to the nearest hospital. Then Garrett and I were put on ice, also under guard, in the living room. Another detective ushered Paul Kendrick into the room a moment later.

He scowled at Dr. Garrett. “We all thought Rosa Rhys was bad medicine. But I never expected anything like this. Why would she want to kill him? It doesn’t make sense.”

“Self-defense?” I suggested. “Could he have made a pass at her and—”

Kendrick shook his head emphatically. “Not that gal. She was making a fast play for the old man—and his money. A pass would have been just what she wanted.” He turned to Garrett. “What were they doing in there—more ESP experiments?”

The doctor laid his overcoat neatly over the back of an ornate Spanish chair. His voice sounded tired and defeated. “No. They had gone beyond that. I told him that she was a fraud, but you know how Drake was—always so absolutely confident that he couldn’t be wrong about anything. He said he’d put her through a test that would convince all of us.”