and left his signature behind."

"What? You mean like in the comic books? Come on, Stevenson! What are you trying to hand me?"

"All I know," insisted Stevenson, "is what I see."

"And all I know," the captain told him, "is Higgins put that name on his rifle himself. He says so."

"And what made it so hot?"

"Hell, man, he'd been firing that thing at people for an hour! What do you think made it hot?"

"All of a sudden?"

"He noticed it all of a sudden, when it started to burn him."

"How come the same name showed up each time, then?" Stevenson asked desperately.

"How should I know? And why not, anyway? You know as well as I do these things happen. A bunch of teen-agers burgle a liquor store and they write 'The Golden Avengers' on the plate glass in lipstick. It happens all the time. Why not 'The Scorpion'? It couldn't occur to two people?"

"But there's no explanation—" started Stevenson.

"What do you mean, there's no explanation? I just gave you the explanation. Look, Stevenson, I'm a busy man. You got a nutty idea—like Wilcox a few years ago, remember him? Got the idea there was a fiend around loose, stuffing all those kids into abandoned refrigerators to starve. He went around trying to prove it, and getting all upset, and pretty soon they had to put him away in the nut hatch. Remember?"

"I remember," said Stevenson.

"Forget this silly stuff, Stevenson," the captain advised him.

"Yes, sir," said Stevenson....

The day after Jerome Higgins went berserk, the afternoon mail brought a crank letter to the Daily News:

Dear Mr. Editor,

You did not warn your readers. The man who shot all those people could not escape the Scorpion. The Scorpion fights crime. No criminal is safe from the Scorpion. WARN YOUR READERS.

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