“Provided it’s with the consent of the examinee. I’m here to tell you whether you’ve got that consent or not.”

Powell looked at Reich. “What happened?”

“Don’t you know?”

“I’d like your version.”

Jo ¼maine snapped: “Why Reich’s in particular?”

“I’d like to know why he hollered so quick for a lawyer. Is he mixed up in this mess?”

“I’m mixed up in plenty,” Reich grinned. “You don’t run Monarch without building a stock-pile of secrets that have got to be protected.”

“But murder isn’t one of them?”

“Get out of there, Linc!”

“Stop throwing blocks, Jo. I’m just peeping around a little because I like the guy.”

“Well, like him on your own time… not mine.”

“Jo doesn’t want me to love you,” Powell smiled to Reich. “I wish you hadn’t called a lawyer. It makes me suspicious.”

“Isn’t that an occupational disease?” Reich laughed.

“No.” Dishonest Abe took over and answered smoothly. “You’d never believe it, but the occupational disease of detectives is Laterality. That’s right-handedness or left-handedness. Most detectives suffer from strange changes of Laterality. I was naturally left-handed until the Parsons Case when I—”

Abruptly, Powell choked off his lie. He took two steps away from his fascinated audience and sighed deeply. When he turned back to them. Dishonest Abe was gone.

“I’ll tell you about that another time,” he said. “Tell me what happened after Maria and the guests saw the blood dripping down on your cuff.”

Reich glanced at the bloodstains on his cuff. “She yelled bloody murder and we all went tearing upstairs to the Orchid Suite.”

“How could you find your way in the dark?”

“It was light. Maria yelled for lights.”

“You didn’t have any trouble locating the suite with the light on, eh?”

Reich smiled grimly. “I didn’t locate the suite. It was secret. Maria had to lead the way.”

“There were guards there… knocked out or something?”

“That’s right. They looked dead.”

“Like stone, eh? They hadn’t moved a muscle?”

“How would I know?”

“How indeed?” Powell looked hard at Reich.

“What about D’Courtney?”

“He looked dead too. Hell, he was dead.”

“And everybody was standing around staring?”

“Some were in the rest of the suite, looking for the daughter.”

“That’s Barbara D’Courtney. I thought nobody knew D’Courtney and his daughter were in the house. Why look for her?”

“We didn’t know. Maria told us and we looked.”

“Surprised to find her gone?”

“We were beyond surprise.”

“Any idea where she went?”

“Maria said she’d killed the old man and rocketed.”

“Would you buy that?”

“I don’t know. The whole thing was crazy. If the girl was lunatic enough to sneak out of the house without a word and go running naked through the streets, she may have had her father’s scalp in her hand.”

“Would you permit me to peep you on all this for background and detail?”

“I’m in the hands of my lawyer.”

“The answer is no,” ¼maine said. “A man’s got the constitutional right to refuse Esper Examination without prejudice to himself. Reich is refusing.”