Greta turned her back to him. "It's just as well. You shouldn't bring back Johnny to this dream of life, give him a ghost of mind and the photograph of a soul. It's monstrous. No one should do that. No one. But you're sure you haven't the money to do it?"

"No," Linton said. "I'm sold out. I've borrowed on my insurance to the hilt. It won't pay any more until I'm buried, and then, of course, you can resurrect me."

"Of course," Greta said. She sighed. "Poor Johnny. He was such a good friend of yours. You must miss him. I'm so sorry for you."

"I have you," he said with great simplicity.

"Frank," she said, "you should see that place in there. There are foaming acid baths, great whale-toothed disposals, barrels of chemicals to quench death and smother decay. It's perfect."

"It sounds carnal," he said uneasily.

"No, dear, it's perfect for some things that have to be done."

Her eyes flashed around the doctor's office and settled somewhere, on something.

Linton followed the direction of Greta's gaze and found only an ashtray stand, looking vaguely like a fanatic's idol to a heathen religion on a pedestal.

Greta pounced on the stand, hefted it at the base and ran toward him with it over her head.

Linton leaped aside and Greta hit the edge of the desk instead of him.

Brain damage, he concluded nervously. Cell deterioration.

Greta raised it again and he caught her wrists high over her head. She writhed against him provocatively. "Frank, I'm sorry, dear, but I have to have that insurance money. It's hell!"

Linton understood immediately. He felt foolish, humiliated. All that money! He had resurrected a gold ring that had turned his knuckles green. No one must ever know.

Linton twisted the stand away from his wife and watched her face in some appalled form of satisfaction as it registered horror and acceptance of the crumpled metal disk falling toward it.

He split her head open and watched her float to the floor.

Linton was surprised at the fine wire mesh 

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