in a clicking rush against the
high-pitched scream: MURDERER--RAOUL BEARDSLEY--MURDERER--RAOUL
BEARDSLEY--MURDERER--RAOUL--MURDERER--MURDERER--incessant, untiring.

* * * * *

There was no trial. Trial presupposes a modicum of doubt, and Beardsley
dispelled that readily enough. Once more the pathetic figure, it was as
if he were impelled by a dull and pitiless logic; he waived all defense;
his confession to the murder of Amos Carmack was straightforward and
factual, unvarying to the point of boredom, insistent with
repetition--and in the socio-legal aspect there was the rub! Whether it
was true psychic shock or mere cunning, there seemed to be a blind spot
in Beardsley's responses, a stumbling reticence to elaborative detail
that left the Citizen's Disposition Council with a problem on its hands
baffling as it was unprecedented. Judicially they were safe. There would
not even be need of null-censor. But actually, the problem here was of
far more vital consequence than murder and indeed more frightening; it
had to do with Beardsley _vs._ ECAIAC, the encompassing _modus operendi_
and all the implications of that grotesque denouement.

At whatever cost, _these things had to be answered_.

Oh, there was amusement, too. The fact that Minister-of-Justice
Mandleco had begged off, far from gracefully, and retired to the
isolation of his ten-thousand-acre Alaskan ranch (for an unspecified
time) had brought snickers from those in the know.

The Chief-Counselor of Disposition looked as if he'd like to retire,
too. For the third time in as many days he took his place in the Private
Sessions chamber, glanced at Beardsley with shuddering disbelief and
then bent his head in pontifical guise as he leafed through his notes;
it wasn't as if he were unversed in the matter by now, but who was there
to question if his lips moved fretfully across the words "Ellery
Sherlock?" He was thinking: _yesterday wasted--covert regression, myself
included--no more of that_! And with that bolstering thought he brought
his head up sharply.

COUNSELOR: Our task for today--(_voice quavering, he saved it from the
upper registers_). Our task for today is to get at the aggregate
pattern. And I assure you, gentlemen, we are going to do that! Now. Mr.
Pederson, if you please....

PEDERSON: Yes, sir?

COUNSELOR: I see that Mr. Beardsley made certain statements to you, and
to you alone, immediately after the--uh--ECAIAC inc