“Listen—”

“No you don’t, Mr. Powell.”

Mary burst into laughter. “So that’s it. You want me for a chaperone. Victorian word, isn’t? So are you, Linc. Positively atavistic.”

“I brand that as a lie. In toffy circles I’m known as the most progressive—”

“And what’s that image? Oh. Knights of the Round Table. Sir Galahad Powell. And there’s something underneath that. I—”

Suddenly she stopped laughing and turned pale.

“What’d you dig?”

“Forget it.”

“Oh, come on, Mary.”

“Forget it, Linc. And don’t peep me for it. If you can’t reach it yourself, you’d better not get it secondhand. Especially from me.”

He looked at her curiously for a moment, then shrugged. “All right, Mary. Then we’d better go to work.”

To Barbara D’Courtney he said: “Help, Barbara.”

Instantly she whipped upright on the dais in a listening attitude, and he probed delicately… Sensation of bedclothes… Voice calling dimly… Whose voice, Barbara?

Deep in the preconscious she answered: “Who is that?”

A friend, Barbara.

“There’s no one. No one. I’m alone.”

And she was alone, racing down a corridor to thrust a door open and burst into an orchid room to see—

“What, Barbara?”

“A man. Two men.”

Who?

“Go away. Please go away. I don’t like voices. There’s a voice screaming. Screaming in my ears…”

And she was screaming while instincts of terror made her dodge from a dim figure that clutched at her to keep her from her father. She turned and circled…

“What is your father doing, Barbara?”

“He— No. You don’t belong here. There’s only the three of us. Father and me and—”

And the dim figure caught her. A flash of his face. No more.

“Look again, Barbara. Sleek head. Wide eyes. Small chiselled nose. Small sensitive mouth. Like a scar. Is that the man? Look at the picture. Is that the man?”

“Yes. Yes. Yes.” And then all was gone.

And she was kneeling again, placid, doll-like, dead.

Powell wiped perspiration from his face and took the girl back to the dais. He was badly shaken… worse than Barbara D’Courtney. Hysteria cushioned the emotional impact for her. He had nothing. He was reliving her terror, her horror, her torture, naked and unprotected.

“It was Ben Reich, Mary. Did you get the picture, too?”

“Couldn’t stay in long enough, Linc. Had to run for cover.”

“It was Reich; all right. Only question is, how in hell did he kill her father? What did he use? Why didn’t old D’Courtney put up a fight to defend himself? Have to try again. I hate to do this to her…”

“I hate you to do this to yourself.”

“Have to.”

He took a deep breath and said: “Help, Barbara.”

Again she whipped upright on the dais in a listening attitude. He slipped in quickly. “Gently, dear. Not so fast. There’s plenty of time.”

“You again?”

“Remember, me, Barbara?”

“No, No, I don’t know you. Get out.”

“But I’m part of you, Barbara. We’re running down the corridor together. See? We’re opening the door together. It’s so much easier, together. We help each other.”