Old Man Mose himself occupied the entire circular wall of the giant office. His multitudinous eyes winked and glared coldly. His multitudinous memories whirred and hummed. His mouth, the cone of a speaker, hung open in a kind of astonishment at human stupidity. His hands, the keys of a multiflex typewriter, poised over a roll of tape, ready to hammer out logic. Mose was the Mosaic Multiplex Prosecution Computer of the District Attorney’s Office, whose awful decisions controlled the preparation, presentation, and prosecution of every police case.

“We won’t bother Mose to start with,” Powell told the D.A. “Let’s take a look at the models and check them against the Crime Schedule. Your staff has the time sheets. Just watch them while the dolls go through the motions. If you catch anything our gang’s missed, make a note and we’ll kick it around.”

He nodded to De Santis, the harassed Lab Chief, who inquired in an overwrought voice: “One to one?”

“That’s a little fast. Make it one to two. Half slow motion.”

“The androids look unreal at that tempo,” De Santis snarled. “It can’t do them justice. We slaved for two weeks and now you—”

“Never mind. We’ll admire them later.”

De Santis verged on mutiny, then touched a button. Instantly the model was illumined and the dolls came to life. Acoustics had faked a background. There was a hint of music, laughter, and chatter. In the main hall of Beaumont House, a pneumatic model of Maria Beaumont slowly climbed to a dais with a tiny book in her hands.

“The time is 11:09 at that point,” Powell said to the D.A.’s staff. “Watch the clock above the model. It’s geared to synchronize with the slow motion.”

In rapt silence, the legal division studied the scene and jotted notes while the androids reproduced the actions of the fatal Beaumont party. Once again Maria Beaumont read the rules of the Sardine game from the dais in the main hall of Beaumont House. The lights dimmed and went out. Ben Reich slowly threaded his way through the main hall to the music room, turned right, mounted the stairs to the Picture Gallery, passed through the bronze doors leading to the Orchid Suite, blinded and stunned the Beaumont guards, and then entered the suite.

And again Reich met D’Courtney face to face, closed with him, drew a deadly knife-pistol from his pocket and with the blade pried D’Courtney’s mouth open while the old man hung weak and unresisting. And again a door of the Orchid Suite burst open to reveal Barbara D’Courtney in a frost-white transparent dressing gown. And she and Reich feinted and dodged until Reich suddenly blew the back of D’Courtney’s head out with a shot through the mouth.

“Got that material from the D’Courtney girl,” Powell murmured. “Peeped her. It’s authentic.”

Barbara D’Courtney crawled to the body of her father, seized the gun and suddenly dashed out of the Orchid Suite, followed by Reich. He pursued her down into the darkened house and lost her as she darted out through the front entrance into the street. Then Reich met Tate and they marched to the Projection Room, pretending to play Sardine. The drama came to an end at last with the stampede of the guests up to the Orchid Suite where the dolls burst in and crowded around the tiny dead body. There they froze in a grotesque little tableau.