own. "Seems to be a psychosomatic
nightmare down there."

"What are the symptoms?"

"Mostly neurotic," she said. "Listlessness, loss of appetite,
palpitations, cold sweats and absent-mindedness."

"Why don't they go to the psychiatric clinics?"

"Overloaded. They're sending patients here."

"What age groups?"

"From puberty to senility. I'd like your permission to do a little
special work on blood samples."

"Another theory?" he asked caustically.

"Yes. Will you give me your permission to test it?"

Murt adjusted his Panama straw in the mirror and noticed that the
nostrils of his straight nose were flared for some reason. "Your time is
your own after three P. M. every day. If you want to take time out from
your thesis research, that's your business."

He crossed to the door and was opening it when he became aware that he
had had no answer. He looked back at the profile of his assistant's
body, which was now stretched out full length, suspended at three
points--her higher-than-practical heels on the linoleum tile, her spine
and curved hips using only an inch of the chair's edge, and her head
tilted over the chair's back. She inhaled from a king-size filter-tip
cigarette and blew a feather of smoke at the ceiling.

"_Yuh!_" she said finally. Her flat abdomen jumped at the exhaled
syllable, and so did her generous breasts under the soft emerald-green
street dress.

"Good _night_!" Murt closed the door behind him quickly and became aware
of a sharp stab of what he defined as pure rut--the first he had
suffered in fifteen years.

II

He taxied downtown to the athletic club, where he maintained his
three-room apartment. The 20-story building was a citadel of
masculinity--no females allowed--and recently it was an especial relief
to enter the lobby and leave behind the world of turbulently mixed
sexes.

The small but lush entry chamber had a deserted air about it this
afternoon. At the room desk, Crumbley, the clerk, handed him his key
with a pallid hand and returned to sigh over a colored picture in
_Esquire_--it was the "fold-out" page, featuring a gorgeous blonde
reclining at full length. Crumbley's expression, however, was far from
the loose-lipped, lecherous leer that he normally exposed to such art.
His eyes had a thin glaze over them, he breathed shallowly and, if Dr.
Murt had not known the little man's cynically promiscuous nature so
well, he'd have sworn Crumbley was in love.

Upstairs,