ined on the exit after he had gone, a faint frown creasing
the smooth skin above her eyes. She had an IRRATIONAL impression that
she had seen Dr. Bemis, the super, instead of Dr. Nale, and with his
head bandaged clumsily.

She dismissed this with a pout and took a book out of a drawer to do her
afternoon reading.

The buzzer on her desk buzzed a warning. She laid the book flat as the
inner office door opened and Dr. Nale escorted Ren Gravenard out into
the waiting room.

Martha glanced at her watch. It was ten after nine. Four minutes! She
expected the nod from Dr. Nale. Her pencil wrote an O.K. after the dash
she had drawn four minutes ago.

"Thank you doctor," Ren Gravenard was saying heartily. The two guards
left by the side door back to quarantine.

Dr. Nale went over and bent close to Martha's ear.

"As your psychiatrist," he said pseudo-seriously, "I can advise you that
unless you kiss me I am going to feel quite frustrated."

"Oh, that would never do!" Martha laughed, and kissed him.

She jerked back, startled. There was the sound of a shot from the inner
office. The door was still open. Martha and Dr. Nale looked through the
door, horrified.

Ren Gravenard was standing in the middle of the inner office dropping a
flat automatic into his side pocket. There was an ugly wound on either
side of his head from a bullet that had passed directly through his
brain.

He smiled at them disarmingly, "It's quite all right. You see, it
couldn't possibly do me any harm because I'm waiting for the elevator."

"Oh," they said, relieved. They bent and kissed each other again while
Ren Gravenard went over to the mirror on the wall and dressed the
wounds, wincing from the raw touch of the alcohol on wounded bone and
flesh.

The outer door opened and two men came in with a wicker basket.

Dr. Nale pointed over in the corner where one of the guards lay dead.

"What happened to him, Doc?" one of the men asked.

"He got shot through the head," Dr. Hargrave explained. "One of the men
off the _Endore_ did it. They're all being taken over to observation. I
think I'll have to go over with them. I'm beginning to get an inkling of
what's going on, and I'm very much afraid of what I think it is."

The two men set the basket down and lifted the wicker lid. Dr. Bemis
came out of the inner office and laid down in the corner. The two men
waited until he had settled himself, then lifted him into the basket.

Dr. Hargrave held