cigarette dead and lit another. He fancied a tiny lever in his brain and he shifted gears to direct his thinking back into the proper channel. Abruptly his fatigue began to lift. He picked up the new pile of reports Bettijean had brought in.

She move around the desk and sat, noting the phone book he had used, studying the names he had crossed off. "Did you learn anything?" she asked.

Andy coughed, trying to clear his raw throat. "It's crazy," he said. "From the Senate and House on down, I haven't found a single government worker sick."

"I found a few," she said. "Over in a Virginia hospital."

"But I did find," Andy said, flipping through pages of his own scrawl, "a society matron and her social secretary, a whole flock of office workers—business, not government—and new parents and newly engaged girls and...." He shrugged.

"Did you notice anything significant about those office workers?"

Andy nodded. "I was going to ask you the same, since I was just guessing. I hadn't had time to check it out."

"Well, I checked some. Practically none of my victims came from big offices, either business or industry. They were all out of one and two-girl offices or small businesses."

"That was my guess. And do you know that I didn't find a doctor, dentist or attorney?"

"Nor a single postal worker."

Andy tried to smile. "One thing we do know. It's not a communicable thing. Thank heaven for—"

He broke off as a cute blonde entered and put stacks of reports before both Andy and Bettijean. The girl hesitated, fidgeting, fingers to her teeth. Then, without speaking, she hurried out.

Andy stared at the top sheet and groaned. "This may be something. Half the adult population of Aspen, Colorado, is down."

"What?" Bettijean frowned over the report in her hands. "It's the same thing—only not quite as severe—in Taos and Santa Fe, New Mexico."

"Writers?"

"Mostly. Some artists, too, and musicians. And poets are among the hard hit."

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