ed Terri, stupefied. "But I'm not going to die. They're
coming to _rescue_ me."

"Oh, are they?" said the old man, ironically.

"Of course!" said Terri. "Of course, why shouldn't they?"

The old man winked one faded eye portentously.

"Fine young man," he said. "Up and coming young man. Brilliant. Never
a thought for the people he trampled on the way up the ladder. Dear
me, no."

"What do you mean?" said Terri.

The old eyes, looking up suddenly, pierced him.

"Do you remember Kilaren?"

"K-Kilaren?"

"Kilaren," recited the old man as if quoting from a newspaper. "The
beautiful young secretary of a provincial governor whose lecherous and
unnatural pursuit drove her to suicide. So that one day to escape the
governor, she jumped or fell from a high window. And the people of the
province, who had for a long time heard ugly stories and rumors,
finally mobbed the office and lynched the governor, hanging him from
the same window from which the girl had jumped. They said that even
the fall had not spoiled her beauty, but that was probably false." The
old man's words dwindled away into silence.

"If so what of it?" said Terri. "What's that to do with me?"

"Why, you were there. You were the governor's aide, and when the mob
had gone home and feeling had slackened off, you stepped into the gap
and seized up the reins of government, handling matters so skillfully
that you were immediately promoted to an under-post at Government
City."

"What of it?"

"Why it was all your doing," replied the other, in a mildly reproving
voice, "the rumors, the stories, the mob, even the suicide. Poor
Kilaren--a pitiful pawn in your ruthless game to eliminate the
governor in your mad dash up the ladder."

"I never touched her!" cried Terri, his voice cracking. "I swear it."

"Who said you did? The type of mind that stoops to murder would never
have gotten you this far. But you were the one who hired her, knowing
the governor's tendencies. You were the one that gave her work that
kept her, night after night, alone with the man. You preyed upon her
fear of losing her job. You threw the sin in her face after she had
committed it. You told her what she might have been, and what she was,
and what she would be. You broke her, day after day. In the sterile
privacy of the office you reviled her, scorned her, brought her to
believe that she was what she was not, a creature of filth and
dishonor. You blocked off all avenues of escape but