At 12:40, the Park precinct Captain arrived in response to Patrol report: “Criminal Act possible Felony-AAA.”

At 1:00 A.M, Lincoln Powell arrived at Beaumont House in response to a frantic call from a deputy inspector: “I tell you, Powell, it’s Felony Triple-A. I’ll swear it is. The wind’s been knocked out of me. I don’t know whether to be grateful or scared; but I know none of us is equipped to handle it.”

“What can’t you handle?”

“Look here, Powell. Murder’s abnormal. Only a distorted TP pattern can produce death by violence. Right?”

“Yes.”

“Which is why there hasn’t been a successful Triple-A in over seventy years. A man can’t walk around with a distorted pattern, maturing murder, and go unnoticed these days. He’d have as much chance of going unnoticed as a man with three heads. You peepers always pick ’em up before they go into action.”

“We try to… when we contact them.”

“And there are too many peeper screens to pass in normal living these days for you to be avoided. A man would have to be a hermit to do that. How can a hermit kill?”

“How indeed?”

“Now here’s a killing that must have been carefully planned… and the killer was never noticed. Never reported. Even by Maria Beaumont’s peeper secretaries. That means there couldn’t have been anything to notice. He must have a passable pattern and yet be abnormal enough to murder. How the hell can we resolve a paradox like that?”

“I see. Any prospects?”

“We’ve got a pay-load of inconsistencies to iron out. One, we don’t know what killed D’Courtney. Two, his daughter’s disappeared. Three, somebody robbed D’Courtney’s guards of one hour and we can’t figure how. Four—”

“Don’t count any higher. I’ll be right over.”

The great hall of Beaumont House blazed with harsh white light. Uniformed police were everywhere. The white-smocked technicians from Lab were scurrying like beetles. In the center of the hall, the party guests (dressed) were assembled in a rough corral, milling like a herd of terrified steers at a slaughter house.

As Powell came down the east ramp, tall and slender, black and white, he felt the wave of hostility that greeted him. He reached out quickly to Jackson Beck, police Inspector 2: “What’s the situation Jax?”

“Scramble.”

Switching to their informal police code of scrambled images, reversed meanings and personal symbols, Beck continued: “Peepers here. Play it safe.” In a microsecond he brought Powell up to date.

“I see. Nasty. What’s everybody doing lumped out on the floor? You staging something?”

“The villain-friend act.”

“Necessary?”

“It’s a rotten crowd. Pampered. Corrupt. They’ll never cooperate. You’ll have to do some tricky coaxing to get anything out of them; and this case is going to need it. I’ll be the villain. You be their friend.”

“Right. Good work. Start recording.”

Halfway down the ramp, Powell halted. The humor departed from his mouth. The friendliness disappeared from his deep dark eyes. An expression of shocked indignation appeared on his face.