riday, April 29. While Chris waited in the hall outside the bedroom, Dr. Klein and a noted neuropsychiatrist were examining Regan.

The doctors observed for half all hour. Flinging. Whirling. Tearing at the hair. She occassionally grimaced and pressed her hands against her ears as if blotting out sudden, deafening noise. She bellowed obscenities. Screamed in pain. Then at last she flung herself face downward onto the bed and tucked her legs up under her stomach. She moaned incoherently.

The psychiatrist motioned Klein away from the bed.

"Let's get her tranquilized," he whispered. "Maybe I can talk to her."

The internist nodded and prepared an injection of fifty milligrams of Thorazine. When the doctors approached the bed, however, Regan seemed to sense them and quickly turned over, and as the neuropsychiatrist attempted to hold her, she began to shriek in malevolent fury. Bit him. Fought him. Held him off. It was only when Karl was called in to assist that they managed to keep her sufficiently rigid for Klein to administer the injection.

The dosage proved inadequate. Another fifty milligrams was injected. They waited.

Regan grew tractable. Then dreamy. Then stared at the doctors in sudden bewilderment. "Where's Mom? I want my Mom!" she wept.

At a nod from the neuropsychiatrist, Klein left the room to go and get Chris.

"Your mother will be here in just a second, dear," the psychiatrist told Regan. He sat on the bed and stroked her head. "There, there, it's all right, dear, I'm a doctor."

"I want Mom!" wept Regan.

"She's coming. Do you hurt, dear?"

She nodded, the tears streaming down.

"Where?"

"just every place!" sobbed Regan. "I feel all achy!"

"Oh, my baby!"

"Mom!"

Chris ran to the bed and hugged her. Kissed her. Comforted and soothed. Then Chris herself began to weep. "Oh, Rags, you're back! It's really you!"

"Oh, Mom, he hurt me!" Regan sniffled. "Make him stop hurting me! Please? Okay?"

Chris looked puzzled for a moment, then glanced to the doctors with a pleading question in her eyes.

"She's heavily sedated," the psychiatrist said gently.

"You mean...?"

He cut her off. "We'll see." Then he turned to Regan. "Can you tell me what's wrong, dear?"

"I don't know," she answered. "I don't know why he does it to me." Tears rolled down from her eyes. "He was always my friend before!"

"Who's that?"

"Captain Howdy! And then it's like somebody else is inside me! Making me do things!"

"Captain Howdy?"

"I don't know!"

"A person?"

She nodded.

"Who?"

"I don't know!"

"Well, all right, then; let's try something, Regan. A game." He was reaching in his pocket for a shining bauble attached to a silvery length of chain. "Have you ever seen movies where someone gets hypnotized?"

She nodded.

"Well, I'm a hypnotist. Oh, yes! I hypnotize people all the time. That's, of course, if they let me. Now I think if I hypnotize you, Regan, it will help you get well. Yes, that person inside you will come right out. Would you like to be hypnotized? See, your mother's right here, right beside you"

Regan looked questioningly to Chris.

"Go ahead, honey, do it," Chas urged her. "Try It."

Regan turned, to the psychiatrist and nodded "Okay," she said softly. "But only a little."

The psychiatrist smiled and glanced abruptly to the sound of pottery breaking behind him. A delicate vase had fallen to the floor from the top of a bureau where Dr. Klein was now resting his forearm. He looked at his arm and then down at the shards with an air of puzzlement; then stooped to pick them up.

"Never mind, doc, Willie'll get it," Chris told him.

"Would you close those shutters for me, Sam?" the psychiatrist asked him. "And pull the drapes?"

When the room was dark, the psychiatrist gripped the chain in his fingertips and began to swing the bauble back and forth with an easy movement. He shone a penlight on it. It glowed. He began to intone the hypnotic ritual. "Now watch this, Regan, keep watching, and soon you'll feel your eyelids growing heavier and heavier...."

Within a very short time, she seemed to be in trance.

"Extremely suggestible," the psychiatrist murmured. Then he spoke to the girl. "Are you comfortable, Regan?"

"Yes." Her voice was soft and whispery.

"How old are you, Regan?"

"Twelve."

"Is there someone inside you?"

"Sometimes."

"When?"

"Different times."

"It's a person?"

"Yes."

"Who is it?"

"I don't know."

"Captain Howdy?"

"I don't know."

"A man?"

"I don't know."

"But he's there."

"Yes, sometimes."

"Now?"

"I don't know."

"If I ask him to tell me, will you let him answer?"

"No!"

"Why not?"

"I'm afraid!"

"Of what?"

"I don't know!"

"If he talks to me, Regan, I think he will leave you. Do you want him to leave you?"

"Yes."

"Let him speak, then. Will you let him speak?"

A pause. Then, "Yes."

"I am speaking to the person inside of Regan now," the psychiatrist said firmly. "If you are there, you too are hypnotized and must answer all my questions." For a moment he paused to allow the suggestion to enter her bloodstream. Then he repeated it: "If you are there, then you are hypnotized and must answer all my questions. Come forward and answer, now: Are you there?"

Silence. Then something curious happened: Regan's breath turned suddenly foul. It was thick, like a current. The psychiatrist smelled it from two feet away. He shone the penlight on Regan's face.

Chris stifled a gasp. Her daugther's features were contorting into a malevolent mask: lips pulling tautly into opposite directions, tumefied tongue lolling wolfish from her mouth.

"Oh, my God!" breathed Chris.

"Are you the person in Regan?" the psychiatrist asked.

She nodded.

"Who are you?"

"Nowonmai," she answered gutturally.

"That's your name?"

She nodded.

"You're a man?"

She said, "Say."

"Did you answer?"

"Say"

"If that's 'yes,' nod your head."

She nodded.

"Are you speaking in a foreign language?"

"Say."

"Where do you come from?"

"Dog."

"You say that you come from a dog?"

"Dogmorfmocion," Regan replied.

The psychiatrist thought for a moment, then attempted another approach. "When I ask you questions now, you will answer by moving your head: a nod for 'yes,' and a shake for 'no.' Do you understand that?"

Regan nodded.

"Did your answers have meaning?" he asked her.

"Yes."

"Are you someone whom Regan has known?" No.

"That she knows of?" No.

"Are you someone she's invented?" No.

"You're real?" Yes.

"Part of Regan?" No.

"Were you ever a part of Regan?" No.

"Do you like her?" No.

"Dislike her?" Yes.

"Do you hate her?" Yes.

"Over something she's done?" Yes.

"Do you blame her for her parents' divorce?" No.

"Has it something to do with her parents?" No.

"With a friend?" No.

"But you hate her?" Yes.

"Are you punishing Regan?" Yes.

"You wish to harm her?" Yes.

"To kill her?" Yes.

"If she died; wouldn't you die too?" No.

The answer seemed to disquiet him and he lowered his eyes in thought. The bed springs squeaked as he shifted his weight. In the smothering stillness, Regan's breathing rasped as from a rotted, putrid bellows. Here. Yet far. Distantly sinister.

The psychiatrist lifted his glance again to that hideous, twisted face. His eyes gleamed sharply with speculation.

"Is there something she can do that would make you leave her?" Yes.

"Can you tell me what it is?"' Yes.

"Will you tell me?" No.

"But---"

Abruptly the psychiatrist gasped is startled pain as he realized with horrified incredulity that Regan was squeezing his scrotum with a hand that had gripped him like an iron talon. Eyes wide-staring he struggled to free himself. He couldn't. "Sam! Sam, help me!" he croaked.

Agony. Bedlam.

Chris looking up and then leaping for the light switch.

Klein running forward.

Regan with her head back, cackling demonically, then howling like a wolf.

Chris slapped at the light switch. Turned. Saw grainy, flickering film of a slow-motion nightmare: Regan and the doctors writhing on the bed in a tangle of shifting arms and legs, in a melee of grimaces, gasps and curses, and the howling and the yelping and the hideous laughter, with Regan oinking, Regan neighing, then the film racing faster and the bedstead shaking, violently quivering from side to side as Chris watched helplessly while her daughter's eyes rolled upward into their sockets and she wrenched up a keening shriek of terror torn raw and bloody from the base of her spine.

Regan crumpled and fell unconscious. Something unspeakable left the room.

For a breathless moment, no one moved. Then slowly and carefully, the doctors untangled themselves; stood up. They stared at Regan. After a time, the expressionless Klein took Regan's pulse. Satisfied, he slowly pulled up her blanket and nodded to the others. They left the room and went down to the study.

For a time, no one spoke. Chris was on the sofa. Klein and the psychiatrist sat near her in facing chairs. The psychiatrist was pensive, pinching at his lip as he stared at the coffee table; then he sighed and looked up at Chris. She turned her burned-out gaze to his. "What the hell's going on?" she asked in a mournful, haggard whisper.

"Did you recognize the language she was speaking?'' he asked her.

Chris shook her head.

"Have you any religion?"

"No."

"Your daughter?"

"No."

And now the psychiatrist asked her a lengthy series of questions relating to Regan's psychological history. When at last he had finished, he seemed disturbed.

"What is it?" Chris asked him, white-knuckled fingers clenching and unclenching on a balled-up handkerchief. "What has she got?"

"Well, it's somewhat confusing," the psychiatrist evaded. "And frankly, it would be quite irresponsible of me to attempt a diagnosis after so brief an examination."

"Well, you must have some idea," she insisted.

The psychiatrist sighed, fingering his brow. "Well, I know you're quite anxious; so I will mention one or two tentative impressions."

Chris leaned forward, nodding tensely, Fingers in her lap started fumbling with the handkerchief, telling the stitches in the hem as if they were wrinkled linen rosary beads.

"To begin with," he told her, "it's highly improbable that she's faking."

Klein was nodding in agreement. "We think so for a number of reasons," the psychiatrist continued. "For example, the abnormal and painful contortions, and most dramatically, I suppose, from the change in her features when we were talking to the so-called person she thinks is inside her. You see, a psychic effect like that is unlikely unless she believed in this person. Do you follow?"

"I think I do," Chris answered, squirming her eyes in puzzlement. "But one thing I don't understand is where this person comes from. I mean, you keep hearing about 'split personality' but I've never really known any explanation."

"Well, neither does anyone else, Mrs. MacNeil. We use concepts like 'consciousness'--- 'mind'--- 'personality,' but we don't really know yet what these things are." He was shaking his head. "Not really. Not at all. So when I start talking about something like multiple or split personality, all we have are some theories that raise more questions than they give answers. Freud thought that certain ideas and feelings are somehow repressed by the conscious mind, but remain alive in a person's subconscious; remain quite strong, in fact, and continue to seek expression through various psychiatric symptoms. Now when this repressed, or let's call it dissociated material--- the word 'dissociation' implying a splitting off from the mainstream of consciousness--- ¬well, when this type of material is sufficiently strong, or where the subject's personality is disorganized and weak, the result can be schizophrenic psychosis. Now that isn't the same, he cautioned, "as dual personality. Schizophrenia means a shattering of personality. But where the dissociated material is strong enough to somehow come glued together, to somehow organize in the individual's subconscious--- why, then it's bees known, at times, to function independently as a sep¬arate personality; to take over the bodily functions."

He took a breath. Chris listened intently and he went on. "That's one theory. There are several others, some of them involving the notion of escape into unawareness; escape from some conflict or emotional problem. Getting back to Regan, she hasn't any history of schizophrenia and the EEG didn't show up the brain-wave pattern that normally accompanies it. So I tend to reject schizophrenia. Which leaves us the general field of hysteria."

"I gave last week," Chris murmured bleakly.

The worried psychiatrist smiled thinly. "Hysteria," he continued, "is a form of neurosis in which emotional disturbances are converted into bodily disorders. Now, in certain of its forms, there's dissociation. In psychasthenia, for example, the individual loses consciousness of his actions, but he sees himself act and attributes his actions to someone else. His idea of the second personality is vague, however, and Regan's seems specific. So we come to what Freud used to call the 'conversion' form of hysteria. It grows from unconscious feelings of guilt and the need to be punished. Dissociation is the paramount feature here, evert multiple personality. And the syndrome might also include epileptoid-like convulsions; hallucinations; abnormal motor excitement."

"Gee, that does sound a lot like Regan," Chris ventured moodily. "Don't you think? I mean, except for the guilt part. What would she have to feel guilty about?"

"Well, a cliché answer," the psychiatrist responded, ¬"might be the divorce. Children often feel they are the ones rejected and assume the full responsibility for the departure of one of their parents. In the case of your daughter, there's reason to believe that that could be the case. Here I'm thinking of the brooding and the deep depression over the notion of people dying: thanatophobia. In children, you'll find it accompanied by guilt formation that's related to family stress, very often fear of the loss of a parent. It produces rage and intense frustration. In addition, the guilt in this type of hysteria needn't be known to the conscious mind. It could even be the guilt that we call "free-floating,' a general guilt that relates to nothing in particular," he concluded.

Chris gave her head a shape. "I'm confused," she murmured. "I mean, where does this new personality come in?"

"Well, again, it's a guess," he replied, "just a guess--- but assuming that it is conversion hysteria stemming from guilt, then the second personality is simply the agent who handles the punishing. If Regan herself were to do it, you see, that would mean she would recognize her guilt. But she wants to escape that recognition. Therefore; a second personality."

"And that's what you think she's got?"

"As I said, I don't know," replied the psychiatrist, still evasive. He seemed to be choosing his words as he would moss-covered stones to cross a stream. "It's extremely unusual for a child of Regan's age, to be able to pull together and organize the components of a new personality. And certain--- well, other things are puzzling. Her performance with the Ouija board, for example, would indicate extreme suggestibility; and yet apparently I never really hypnotized her." He shrugged. "Well, perhaps she resisted. But the really striking thing," he noted, "is the new personality's apparent precocity. It isn't a twelve-year-old at all. It's much, much older. And then there's the language she was speaking...." He stated at the rug in front of the fireplace, thoughtfully tugging at his lower lip. "There's a similar state, of course, but we don't know much about it: a form of somnambulism where the subject suddenly manifests knowledge or skills that he's never learned--- and where the intention of the second personality is the destruction of the first. However..."

The word trailed away. Abruptly the psychiatrist looked up at Chris. "Well, it's terribly complicated," he told her, "and I've oversimplified outrageously."

"So what's the bottom line?" Chris aspect.

"At the moment," he told her, "a blank. She need an intensive examination by a team of experts; two or three weeks of really concentrated study in a clinical atmosphere; say, the Barringer Clinic in Dayton."

Chris looked away.

"It's a problem?"

"No. No problem." She sighed. "I just lost Hope, that's all."

"Didn't get you."

"It's an inside tragedy."

The psychiatrist telephoned the Barringer Clinic from Chris's study. They agreed to take Regan the following day.

The doctors left.

Chris swallowed pain with remembrance of Dennings, with remembrance of death and the worm and the void and unspeakable loneliness and stillness, darkness, underneath the sod, with nothing moving, no, no motion.... Briefly, she wept. Too much... too much... Then she put it away and began to pack.

She was standing in her bedroom selecting a camouflaging wig to wear in Dayton when Karl appeared. There was someone to see her, he told her.

"Who?"

"Detective."

"And he wants to see me?"

He nodded. Then he handed her a business card. She looked it over blankly. WILLIAM F. KINDERMAN, it announced, LIEUTENANT OF DETECTIVES; and tucked in the lower-left-hand corner like a poor relation: Homicide Division. It was printed in an ornate, raised Tudor typeface that might have been selected by a dealer in antiques.

She looked up from the card with a sniffing suspicion. "Has he got something with him that might be a script? Like a big manila envelope or something?"

There was no one in the world, Chris had come to discover, who didn't have a novel or a script or a notion for one or both tucked away in a drawer or a mental sock. She seemed to attract them as priests did drunks.

But Karl shook his head. Chris immediately grew curious and walked down the stairs. Burke? Was it something to do with Burke?

He was sagging in the entry hall, the brim of his limp and crumpled hat clutched tight with short fat fingers freshly manicured. Plump. In his middle fifties. Jowly cheeks that gleamed of soap. Yet rumpled trousers, cuffed and baggy, mocked the sedulous care that he gave his body. A gray tweed coat hung loose and old-fashioned, and his moist brown eyes, which dropped at the corners, seemed to be staring at times gone by. He wheezed asthmatically as he waited.

Chris approached. The detective extended his hand with a weary and somewhat fatherly manner, and spoke in a hoarse, emphysematous whisper. "I'd know that face in any lineup, Miss MacNeil."

"Am I in one?" Chris asked him earnestly as she took his hand.

"Oh, my goodness, oh, no," he said, brushing at the notion with his hand as if swatting at a fly. He'd closed his eyes and inclined his head; the other hood rested lightly on his paunch. Chris was expecting a God forbid! "No, it's strictly routine," he assured her, "routine. Look, you're busy? Tomorrow. I'll come again tomorrow."

He was turning away as if to leave, but Chris said anxiously, "What is it? Burke? Burke Dennings?"

The detective's drooping, careless ease had somehow tightened the springs of her tension.

"A shame. What a shame," the detective breathed, with lowered eyes and a shake of the head.

"Was he killed?" Chris asked with a look of shock. "I mean, is that why you're here? He was killed? Is that it?"

"No, no, no, it's routine." he repeated, "routine. You know, a man so important, we just couldn't pass it. We couldn't," he pleaded with a helpless look. "At least one or two questions. Did he fall? Was he pushed?" As he asked, he was listing from side to side with his head and his hand. Then he shrugged and huskily whispered, "Who knows?"

"Was he robbed?"

"No, not robbed, Miss MacNeil, never robbed, but then who needs a motive in times like these?" His hands were constantly in motion, like a flabby glove informed by the fingers of a yawning puppeteer. "Why, today, for a murderer, Miss MacNeil, a motive is only an encumbrance; in fact, a deterrent." He shook his head. "These drugs, these drugs," he bemoaned. "These drugs. This LSD."

He load at Chris as he tapped his chest with the tips of his fingers. "Believe me, I'm a father, and when I see what's going on, it breaks my heart. You've got children?"

"Yes, one."

"A son?"

"A daughter."

"Well..."

"Listen, come on in the study," Chris interrupted anxiously, turning about to lead the way. She was losing all patience.

"Miss MacNeil, could I trouble you for something?"

She turned with the dim and weary expectation that he wanted her autograph for his children. It was never for themselves. It was always for their children. "Yeah, sure," she said.

"My stomach." He gestured with a trace of a grimace. "Do you keep any Calso water, maybe? If it's trouble, never mind; I don't want to be trouble."

"No, no trouble at all," she sighed. "Grab a chair in the study." She pointed, then turned and headed for the kitchen. "I think there's a bottle in the fridge."

"No, I'll come to the kitchen," he told her, following. "I hate to be a bother."

"No bother."

"No, really, you're busy, I'll come. You've got children?" he asked as they walked. "No, that's right; Yes, a daugther;. you told me; that's right. Just the one."

"And how old?"

"She just turned twelve."

"Then you don't have to worry," he breathed. "No, not yet. Later on, though, watch, out." He was shaking his head. Chris noticed that his walk was a modified waddle. "When you see all the sickness day in and day out," he continued. "Unbelievable. Incredible. Crazy. You know, I looked at my wife just a couple of days ago--- or weeks ago--- I forget. I said, Mary, the world--- ¬the entire world--- is having a massive nervous breakdown. All. The whole world." He gestured globally.

They had entered the kitchen, where Karl was polishing the interior of the oven. He neither turned nor acknowledged their presence.

"This is really so embarrassing," the detective wheezed hoarsely as Chris was opening the refrigerator door. Yet his gaze was on Karl brushing swiftly and questioningly over his back, and his arms and his neck like a small, dark bird skimming over a lake. "I meet a famous motion-picture star," he confinued, "and I ask for some Calso water. Ah, boy."

Chris had found the bottle aced now was looking for an opener. "Ice?" she asked.

"No, plain; plain is fine."

She was opening the bottle.

"You know that film you made called Angel?" he said. "I saw that film six times."

"If you were looking for the killer," she murmured as she poured out the bubbling Calso, "arrest the producer and the cutter."

"Oh, no, no, it was excellent--- really--- I loved it!"

"Sit down" She was nodding at the table.

"Oh, thank you." He sat. "No, the film was just lovely," he insisted. "So touching. But just one thing," he ventured, "One little tiny, minuscule point. Oh, thank you."

She'd set down the glass of Calso and sat on the other side of the table, hands clasped before her.

"One minor flaw," he resumed apologetically. "Only minor. And please believe me, I'm only a layman. You know? I'm just audience. What do I know? How¬ever, it seemed to me--- to a layman--- that the musical score was getting in the way of certain scenes. It was too intrusive." He was earnest now; caught up. "It kept on reminding me that this was a movie. You know? Like so many of these fancy camera angles lately. So distracting. Incidentally, the score, Miss MacNeil--- did he steal that perhaps from Mendelssohn?"

Chris drummed her fingertips lightly on the table. Strange detective. And why was he constantly glancing to Karl?

"I wouldn't know," she said, "but I'm glad you liked the picture. Better drink that," she told him, nodding to the Calso. "It tends to get flat."

"Yes, of course. I'm so garrulous. You're busy. Forgive me." He lifted the glass as if in toast and drained its contents, his little finger arching demurely away from the others. "Ah, good, that's good," he exhaled, contented, as he put aside the glass, his eye falling lightly on Regan's sculpture of the bird. It was now the centerpiece of the table, its beak floating mockingly and at length above the salt and pepper shakers. "Quaint." He smiled. "Nice." He looked up. "The artist?"

"My daughter," Chris told him.

"Very nice."

"Look, I hate to be---"

"Yes, yes, I know, I'm a nuisance. Well, look, just a question or two and we're done. In fact, only one question and then I'll be going." He was glancing at his wristwatch as if he were anxious to get away to some appointment. "Since poor Mr. Dennings," he labored breathily; "had completed his filming in this area, we wondered if he might have been visiting someone on the night of the accident. Now other than yourself, Of course, did he have any friends in this area?"

"Oh, he was here that night," Chris told him.

"Oh?" His eyebrows sickled upward. "Near the time of the accident?"

"When did it happen?" she asked him.

"Seven-o-five," he told her.

"Yes, I think so."

"Well, that settles it, then." He nodded, turning in his chair as if preparatory to rising. "He was drunk, he was leaving, he fell down the steps. Yes, that settles it. Definitely. Listen, though, just for the sake of the record, can you tell me approximately what time he left the house?"

He was pawing at truth like a weary bachelor pinching vegetables at market. How did he ever make lieutenant? Chris wondered. "I don't know," she replied. "I didn't see him."

"I don't understand."

"Well, he came and left while I was out I was over at a doctor's office in Rosslyn."

"Ah, I see." He nodded. "Of course, But the how do you know he was here?"

'Oh, well, Sharon said---"

"Sharon?"' he interrupted.

"Sharon Spencer. She's my secretary. She was here when Burke dropped by. She---"

"He came to see her?" he asked.

"No, me."

'Yes, of course. Yes, forgive me for interrupting."

"My daughter was sick and Sharon left him here while she went to pick up some prescriptions. By the time I got home, though, Burke was gone."

"And what time was that, please?"

"Seven-fifteen or so, seven-thirty."

"And what time had you left?"

"Maybe six-fifteenish."

"What time had Miss Spencer left?"

"I don't know."

"And between the time Miss Spencer left and the time you returned, who was here in the house with Mr. Dennings besides your danghter?"

"No one."

"No one? He left her alone?"

She nodded.

"No servants?"

"No, Willie and Karl were---"

'Who are they?"

Chris abruptly felt the earth shift under her feet. The nuzzling interview, she realized, was suddenly steely interrogation. "Well, Karl's right there." She motioned with her head, her glance fixed dully on the servant's back. Still polishing the oven... "And Willie's his wife," she resumed. "They're my housekeepers." Polishing... "They'd taken the afternoon off and when I got home, they weren't back yet. Willie..." Chris paused.

"Willie what?"

"Oh, well, nothing." She, shrugged as she tugged her gaze away from the manservant's brawny back. The oven was clean, she had noticed. Why was Karl still polishing?

She reached for a cigarette. Kinderman lit it.

"So then only your daughter would know when Dennings left the house."

"It was really an accident?"

"Oh, of course. It's routine, Miss MacNeil, its routine. Mr. Dennings wasn't robbed and he had no enemies, none that we know of, that is, in the District."

Chris darted a momentary glance to Karl but then shifted it quickly bade to Kinderman. Had he noticed? Apparently not. He was fingering the sculpture.

"It's got a name, this kind of bird; I can't think of it. something." He noticed Chris staring and looked vaguely embarrassed. "Forgive me, you're busy. Well, a minute and we're done. Now your daughter, she would know when Mr. Dennings left?"

"No, she wouldn't. She was heavily sedated."

"Ah, dear me, a shame, a shame." His droopy eyelids seeped concern. "It's serious?"

"Yes, I'm afraid it is."

"May I ask...?" he probed with a delicate gesture.

'We still don't know."

"Watch out for drafts," he cautioned firmly.

Chris looked blank.

"A draft in the winter when a house is hot is a magic carpet for bacteria. My mother used to say that. Maybe that's folk myth. Maybe." He shrugged. "But a myth, to speak plainly, to me is like a menu in a fancy French restaurant: glamorous, complicated camouflage for a fact you wouldn't otherwise swallow, like maybe lima beans," he said earnestly.

Chris relaxed. The shaggy dog padding fuddled through cornfields had returned.

"That's hers, that's her room"--- he was thumbing toward the ceiling--- "with that great big window looking out on these steps?"

Chris nodded.

"Keep the window closed and she'll get better."

"Well, it's always closed and it's always shuttered" Chris said as he dipped a pudgy hand in the inside pocket of his jacket.

"She'll get better," he repeated sententiously. "Just remember, 'An ounce of prevention...' "

Chris drummed her fingertips on the tabletop again.

"You're busy. Well, we're finished. Just a note for the record--- routine--- we're all done."

From the pocket of the jacket he'd extracted a crumpled mimeographed program of a high-school production of Cyrano de Bergerac and now groped in the pockets of his coat, where he netted a toothmarked yellow stub of a number 2 pencil, whose point had the look of having been sharpened with the blade of a scissors. He pressed the program flat on the table, brushing out the wrinkles. "Now just a name or two," he puffed. "That's Spencer with a c?"

"Yes, c."

"A c," he repeated, writing the name in a margin of the program. "And the housekeepers? John and Willie...?"

"Karl and Willie Engstrom."

"Karl. That's right, it's Karl. Karl Engstrom." He scribbled the names in a dark, thick script. "Now the times I remember," he told her huskily, turning the program around in search of white space. "Times I--- ¬Oh. Oh, no, wait. I forgot. Yes, the housekeepers. You said they got home at what time?"

'I didn't say. Karl, what time did you get in last night?" Chris called to him.

The Swiss turned around, his face inscrutable. "Exactly nine-thirty, madam."

"Yeah, that's right, you'd forgotten your key. I remember I looked at the clock in the kitchen when you rang the doorbell."

"You saw a good film?" the detective asked Karl. "I never go by reviews," he explained to Chris in a breathy aside. "It's what the people think, the audi¬ence."

"Paul Scofield in Lear," Karl informed the detective.

"Ah, I saw that; that's excellent. Excellent. Marvelous "

"Yes, at the Crest," Karl continued. "The six-o'clock showing. Then immediately after I take the bus from in front of the theater and---"

"Please, that's not necessary," the detective pro¬tested with a gesture. "Please."

"I don't mind."

"If you insist."

"I get off at Wisconsin Avenue and M Street. Nine-twenty, perhaps. And then I walk to the house."

"Look, you didn't have to tell me," the detective told him, "but anyway, thank you, it was very considerate. You liked the film?"

"It was excellent."

"Yes, I thought so too. Exceptional. Well, now..." He turned back to Chris and to scribbling on the program. "I've wasted your time, but I have a job." He shrugged. "Well, only a moment and finished. Tragic... tragic..." hebreathed as he jotted down fragments in margins. "Such a talent. And a man who knew people, I'm sure: how to handle them. With so many elements who could make him look good or maybe make him look bad--- like the cameraman, the sound man, the composer, whatever.... Please correct me if I'm wrong, bud it seems to me nowadays a director of importance has also to be almost a Dale Carnegie. Am I wrong?"

"Oh, well, Burke had a temper," Chris sighed.

The detective repositioned the program. "Ah, well, maybe so with the big shots. People his size." Once again he was scribbling. "But the key is the little people, the menials, the people who handle the minor details that if they didn't handle right would be major details. Don't you think?"

Chris glanced at her fingernails and ruefully shook her head. "When Burke let fly, he never discriminated," she murmured with a weak, wry smile. "No, sir. It was only when he drank, though."

"Finished. We're finished." Kinderman was dotting a final i. "Oh, no, wait," he abruptly remembered. "Mrs. Engstrom. They went and came together?" He was gesturing toward Karl.

"No, she went to see a Beatles film," Chris answered just as Karl was turning to reply. "She got in a few minutes after I did."

"Why did I ask that? It wasn't important." He shrugged as he folded up the program and tucked it away in the pocket of his jacket along with the pencil. "Well, that's that. When I'm back in the office, no doubt I'll remember something I should have asked. With me, that always happens. Oh, well, I could call you," he puffed, standing up.

Chris rose along with him.

"Well, I'm going out of town for a couple of weeks," she said.

"It can wait" he assured her. "It can wait." He was staring of the sculpture with a smiling fondness. "Cute. So cute," he said. He'd leaned over and picked it up and was rubbing his thumb along is beak.

Chris bent over to pick up a thread on the kitchen floor.

"Have you got a good doctor?" the detective asked her. "I mean for your daughter."

He replaced the figure and began to leave. Glumly Chris followed, winding the thread around her thumb.

"Well, I've sure got enough of them," she murmured. "Anyway, I'm checking her into a clinic that's supposed to be great at doing what you do, only viruses."

"Let's hope they're a great deal better. It's out of town, this clinic?"

"Yes, it is."

"It's a good one?"

"We'll see."

"Keep her out of the draft."

They had reached the front door of the house. He put a hand on the doorknob. "Well, I would say that it's been a pleasure, but under the circumstances..." He bowed his head and shook it. "I'm sorry. Really. I'm terribly sorry."

Chris folded her arms and looked down at the rug. She nodded briefly.

Kinderman opened the door and stepped outside. As he turned to Chris, he was putting on his hat. "Well, good luck with your daugher."

"Thanks." She smiled wanly. "Good luck with the world."

He nodded with a gentle warmth and sadness, then waddled away. Chris watched as he listed toward a waiting squad car parked near the corner in front of a fire hydrant. He flung up a hand to his hat as a shearing wind sprang sharp from the south. The hem of his coat flapped. Chris closed the door.

When he'd entered the passenger side of the squad car, Kinderman fumed and looked back at the house. He thought he saw movement at Regan's window, a quick, lithe figure flashing to the side and out of view. He wasn't sure. He'd seen it peripherally as he'd turned. But he noted that the shutters were open. Odd. For a moment he waited. No one appeared. With a puzzled frown, the detective turned and opened the glove compartment, extracting a small brown envelope and a penknife. Unclasping the smallest of the blades of the knife, he held his thumb inside the envelope and surgically scraped paint from Regan's sculpture from under his thumbnail. When he had finished and was sealing the envelope, he nodded to the detective-sergeant behind, the wheel. They pulled away.

As they drove down Prospect Street, Kinderman pocketed the envelope. "take it easy," he captioned the sergeant, glancing at the traffic building up ahead. "This is business, not pleasure." He rubbed at his eyes with weary fingers. "Ah, what a life," he sighed. "What a life."

Later, that evening, while Dr. Klein was injecting Regan with fifty milligrams of Sparine to assure her tranquillity on the journey to Dayton, Lieutenant Kinderman stood brooding in his office, palms pressed flat atop his desk as he pored over fragments of baffling data. The narrow beam of an ancient desk lamp flared on a clutter of scattered reports. There was no other light. He believed that it helped him narrow the focus of concentration.

Kinderman's breathing labored heavy in the darkness as his glance flitted here; now there. Then he took a deep breath and shut his eyes. Mental Clearance Sale! he instructed himself, as he did whenever he wished to tidy his brain for a fresh point of view: Absolutely Everything Must Go!

When he opened his eyes, he examined the pathologist's report on Dennings:...tearing of the spinal cord with fractured skull and neck, plus numerous contusions, lacerations, and abrasions; stretching of the neck skin; ecchymosis of the neck skin; shearing of platysma, sternomastoid, splenius, trapezius and various smaller muscles of the neck, with fracture of the spine and of the vertebrae and shearing of both the anterior and posterior spi¬nous ligaments....

He looked out a window at the dark of the city. The Capitol dome light glowed. The Congress was working late. He shut his eyes again, recalling his conversation with the District pathologist at eleven-fifty-five on the night of Denning's death.

"It could have happened in the fall?"

"No, it's very unlikely. The sternomastoids and the trapezius muscles alone are enough to prevent it. Then you've also got the various articulations of the cervical spine to be overcome as well as the ligaments holding the bores together."

"Speaking plainly, however, is it possible?"

"Well, of course, he was drunk and these muscles were doubtless somewhat relaxed. Perhaps if the force of the initial impact were sufficiently powerful and---"

"Falling maybe twenty or thirty feet before he hit?"

"Yes, that, and if immediately after impact his head got stuck in something; to other words, if there were immediate interference with the normal rotation of the head and body as a unit, well maybe--- I say just maybe--- you could get this result."

"Could another human being have done it?"

"Yes, but he'd have to be an exceptionally powerful man."

Kinderman had checked Karl Engstrom's story regarding his whereabouts at the time of Denning's death. The show times matched, as did the schedule that night of a D.C. Transit bus. Moreover, the driver of the bus that Karl had claimed he had boarded by the theater went off duty at Wisconsin and M, where Karl had stated he alighted at approximately twenty minutes after nine. A change of drivers had taken place, and the off-duty driver had logged the time of his arrival at the transfer point: precisely nine-eighteen.

Yet on Kinderman's desk was a record of a felony charge against Engstrom on August 27, 1963, alleging he had stolen a quantity of narcotics over a period of months from the home of a doctor in Beverly Hills where he and Willie were then employed....born April 20, 1921, in Zurich, Switzerland. Married to Willie nee Braun September 7, 1941. Daughter, Elvira, born New York City, January 11, 1943, current address unknown. Defendant...

The remainder the detective found baffling:

The doctor, whose testimony was sine qua non for successful prosecution, abruptly--- and without any explanation--- dropped the charges.

Why would he done so?

The Engstrom were hired by Chris MacNeil only two months later, which meant that the doctor had given them a favorable reference.

Why would he do so?

Engstrom had certainly pilfered the drugs, and yet a medical examination at the time of the charge had failed to yield the slightest sign that the man was an addict, or even a user.

Why not?

With his eyes still closed, the detective softly recited Lewis Carroll's "Jabberwocky": " 'Twas brillig and the slithy tones..." Another of his mind-clearing tricks.

When he'd finished reciting, he opened his eyes and fixed his gaze on the Capitol rotunda, trying to keep his mind a blank. But as usual, he found the task impossible. Sighing, he glanced at the police psychologist's report on the recent desecrations at Holy Trinity: "...statue...phallus...human excrement... Damien Karras," he had underscored in red. He breathed in the silence and then reached for a scholarly work on witchcraft, turning to a page he had marked with a paper clip:

Black Mass... a form of devil worship, the ritual, in the main, consisting of (1) exhortation (the "sermon") to performance of evil among the community, (2) coition with the demon (reputedly painful, the demon's penis invariably described as "icy cold"), and (3) a variety of desecrations that were largely sexual in nature. For example, communion Hosts of unusual size were prepared (compounded of flour, feces, menstrual blood and pus), which then were slit and used as artificial vaginas with which the priests would ferociously copulate while raving that they were ravishing the Virgin Mother of God or that they were sodomizing Christ. In another instance of such practice, a statue of Christ was inserted deep in a girl's vagina while into her anus was inserted the Host, which the priest then crushed as he shouted blasphemies and sodomized the girl. Life-sized images of Christ and the Virgin Mary also played a frequent role in the ritual. The image of the Virgin, for example--- usually painted to give her a dissolute, sluttish appearance--- was equipped with breasts which cultists sucked, and also a vagina into which the penis might be inserted. The statues of Christ were equipped with a phallus for fellatio by both the men and the women, and also for insertion into the vagina of the women and the anus of the men. Occasionally, rather than an image, a human figure was bound to a cross and made to function in place of the statue, and upon the discharge of his semen it was collected in a blasphemously consecrated chalice and used in the making of the communion host, which was destined to be consecrated on an altar coveted with excrement. This---

Kinderman flipped the pages to an underlined paragraph dealing with ritualistic murder. He read it slowly, nibbling at the pad of an index finger, and when he had finished he frowned at the page and shook his head. He lifted a brooding glance to the ¬lamp. He flicked it out. He left his office and drove to the morgue.

The young attendant at the desk wan munching at a ham and cheese sandwich on rye, and brushed the crumbs from a crossword puzzle as Kinderman approached him.

"Dennings," the detective whispered hoarsely.

The attendant nodded, filling in a five-letter horizontal, then rose with his sandwich and moved down the hall. Kinderman followed him, hat in hand, followed faint scent of caraway seed and mustard to rows of refrigerated lockers, to the dreamless cabinet used for the filing of sightless eyes.

They halted at locker 32, The expressionless attendant slid it out. He bit at his sandwich, and a fragment of mayonnaise-speckled crust fell lightly to the shroud.

For a moment Kinderman stared down; then, slowly and gently, he pulled back the sheet to expose what he'd seen and yet could not accept.

Burke Dennings' head was turned completely around, facing backward.