what?"

"Well, like I said yesterday, I suppose I just naturally came out of it. I'm all spread out on the floor with the damndest headache you ever saw. Over by the window is the Prof and—" he wet his lips—"and Juanita. They're dead, Lieutenant; just kind of all piled up over there ... dead, their heads busted in and the—the—the—"

He sat there, his mouth working but no sound coming out, his eyes staring straight into the blazing light, the cigarette smouldering, forgotten, between the first two fingers of his left hand.

Almost gently Kirk said: "Let's go back to where you were standing outside the door. You heard this woman talking. What did she say?"

Cordell looked sightlessly down at his hands. "Nothing that made sense. Sounded, near as I can remember, like: 'Twelve times zero'—then some words, or more numbers maybe—I'm not sure—then she said, 'Chained to a two hundred thousand years'—and the Professor said something about his colleges having no idea and he'd warn them—and the blonde said, 'Three in the past five months'—and then something about taking in washing—"

The detective named Miller gave a derisive grunt. "Of all the goddam stories! Kirk, you gonna listen to any—"

Kirk silenced him with a gesture. "Go on, Cordell."

The young man slowly lifted the cigarette to his mouth, dragged heavily on it, then let it fall to the floor. "That's all. That's when the lights started flashing in there and I tried to be a hero."

"Sure you've left nothing out?"

"You've got it all. The truth, like you wanted."

Kirk said patiently, "Give it up, Cordell. You're as sane as the next guy. Give that story to a jury and they'll figure you're trying to make saps out of them—and when a jury gets sore at a defendant, he gets the limit. And in case you didn't know: in this State, the limit for murder is the hot seat!"

The prisoner stared at him woodenly. "You know I didn't kill my wife—or Professor Gilmore. I had no reason to—no motive. There's got to be a motive."

The police officer rubbed his chin reflectively. "Uh-hunh. Motive. How long you married, Cordell?"

"Six 

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