"This will be hard to believe," Lima said, "and I will not try to prove it to you, but it is true. The mind has many powers which cannot even be imagined by anyone who has not lived with those powers as I have. When you called me, your mind attuned itself with mine, and its need and its demand were so powerful that together we turned time backward. You are now back in my dressing room, and it is the exact time at which you originally came out of your dream."

"That's impossible!" Bennett protested.

"Nevertheless, it happened. I only ask you to keep in mind one thing. Someday, when your mind has been made more facile, you will understand how I am able to do this. It will even appear logical to you. Now, however, the only thing I can tell you is believe it!"

ennett had no intention of muffing this second chance. After he had collected the information about Tournay's criminal activities, he also dug into his past for a man who had cause to hate the contractor. He found the man he sought, a man as ruthless and unscrupulous as Tournay himself, one who could fight him on his own ground.

Roger Clarkson had been the controller of a string of bookie joints, before he had been framed by Tournay, and convicted, to serve ten years in prison.

Clarkson had been released from prison six days before. He found that Tournay had gained control of his former criminal empire. Everyone, including Tournay, knew that the only thing preventing Clarkson from taking revenge was the opportunity.

Bennett sent his information to Clarkson and sat back to await the results. That evening, as he was about to leave his office building, some inner caution warned him to take no chances. He stepped cautiously out into the street, looked both ways for the gray sedan, and saw that the street was empty, before he walked to the corner.

He arrived there just in time to meet the long gray sedan as it drove up.

nce more he fought the awful exertion on the mystic's couch. This time he came out of the blackness with his mind clear. "You've saved me again," he said to Lima. "Have you turned time backward again?"

"Yes," she replied. "But I have given you all the help I can. The next attempt you make, you will have nothing on which to lean except your own strength."

"But why do I always arrive at the point where I'm being shot 

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