and slid an evening paper across the battered brown linoleum top of the Lieutenant's desk.

"This oughta interest you," he said, jabbing a chewed thumbnail at an item under a two-column head half-way down the left side of page one.

CORDELL DRAWS DEATH NOD

Killer of Wife and Atom Wizard To Face Chair in January

CONTENTS

Paul Cordell, 29, was today doomed by Criminal Court Justice Edwin P. Reed to death by electrocution the morning of January 11, for the murders of his wife, Juanita, 29, and her employer, world-famous nuclear scientist Gregory Gilmore.

A jury last week found Cordell guilty of the brutal slayings despite his testimony that it was a mysterious blonde woman, floating in a "ball of blue fire," who had blasted the victims with a "ray gun" on that October afternoon.

Ignoring the "girl from Mars" angle, alienists for the prosecution pronounced the handsome defendant sane, and his attorneys were powerless to offset the damage.

The final blow to Cordell's hopes for acquittal, however, was administered by the State's key witness, Alma Dakin, Gilmore's former secretary. For more than three hours she underwent one of the most grilling cross-examinations in local courtroom....

Kirk shoved the paper aside, "What could he expect when he wouldn't even listen to his own lawyers? They'll appeal—they have to—but it'll be a waste of time."

He leaned back in the creaking swivel chair and began to unwrap the cellophane from a cigar. "In a way," he said thoughtfully, "I hate to see that kid end up in the fireless cooker. In this business you get so you can recognize an act when you see one, and I'd swear Cordell wasn't lying about that blonde and her blue fire. At least he thought he wasn't."

Chenowich yawned. "I say he was nuts then and he's nuts now. What do them bug doctors know? I never seen one yet could count his own fingers."

The telephone on Martin Kirk's desk rang while he was lighting his cigar. He tossed the match on the floor to join a dozen others, and picked up the receiver. "Homicide; Lieutenant Kirk speaking."

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