se, just in time to have the damned stuff start all over
again at the stumps of his arms and legs. He died when hardening reached
his vitals.

Since that day, some twenty-odd years ago, there had been about thirty
cases a year turn up. All fatal, despite amputations and everything else
known to modern medical science. God alone knew how many unfortunate
human beings took to suicide without contacting the big Medical Research
Center at Marion, Indiana.

Well, if Thorndyke could uncover something, no one could claim that a
telepath had no place in medicine. I wished him luck.

I did not see Thorndyke again in that hospital. They released me the
next day and then I had nothing to do but to chew my fingernails and
wonder what had happened to Catherine.

III

I'd rather not go into the next week and a half in detail. I became
known as the bridegroom who lost his bride, and between the veiled
accusations and the half-covered snickers, life was pretty miserable. I
talked to the police a couple-three times, first as a citizen asking for
information and ending up as a complainant against party or parties
unknown. The latter got me nowhere. Apparently the police had more lines
out than the Grand Bank fishing fleet and were getting no more nibbles
than they'd get in the Dead Sea. They admitted it; the day had gone when
the police gave out news reports that an arrest was expected hourly,
meaning that they were baffled. The police, with their fine collection
of psi boys, were willing to admit when they were really baffled. I
talked to telepaths who could tell me what I'd had for breakfast on the
day I'd entered pre-school classes, and espers who could sense the color
of the clothing I wore yesterday. I've a poor color-esper, primitive so
to speak. These guys were good, but no matter how good they were,
Catherine Lewis had vanished as neatly as Ambrose Bierce.

I even read Charles Fort, although I have no belief in the supernatural,
and rather faint faith in the Hereafter. And people who enter the
Hereafter leave their remains behind for evidence.

Having to face Catherine's mother and father, who came East to see me,
made me a complete mental wreck.

It is harder than you think to face the parents of a woman you loved,
and find that all you can tell them is that somehow you fouled your
drive, cracked up, and lost their daughter. Not even dead-for-sure.
Death, I think, we all could have faced. But this uncertainty wa