street--and if gadgets have ghosts--"

He was in a state of mind in which consecutive thought was not easy. There were too many inexplicables, too many tag ends of fact. From Coghlan's tale of an impossible book with an impossible message--which Mannard had seen now--to a preposterous shot smashing a coffee-cup to keep him from drinking an incredibly poisoned drink, and to a physical phenomenon of frost without refrigeration and a look of silvery metal which was not matter.... Mannard was an engineer. He was hard-headed. He was prepared to face anything which was fact, and worry about theory afterward. But he was not able to adjust to so many facts at once, each of them contradicting any reasonable theory. He looked at once irritable and dogged and a little frightened. "When I try to think this thing over, I don't believe even what I tell myself!" he said angrily. "Things happen, and I believe 'em while they're happening, but they don't make any damned sense afterward!"

He stamped out of the room. They heard him telephoning an order for dinner for four sent up to the suite at once. Then he snapped: "Yes, that's all. What? Yes, she's in--who wants her? Who? Oh. Send him on up." He came back. "What the hell does Appolonius want to see you for, Laurie? He was downstairs asking if you'd see him when I phoned. He's coming up." Then he went back to his former subject, still fuming. "I tell you, there's something wrong about the whole approach to this business! It seems that somebody is trying to kill me. I don't know why they should, but if they really want to it ought to be a simple enough job! It shouldn't call for all these trimmings! Nobody would set out to kill somebody and add in a seven-hundred-year-old book and a forgery of Tommy's fingerprints and a gadget's ghost and all the rest! Not if a plain, ordinary murder was back of it--or a swindle either! So what in--"

The buzzer sounded at the door of the suite. Coghlan went to answer it.

Appolonius the Great started visibly when he saw Coghlan. He said with great dignity: "I had a note from Miss Mannard. She asked me to befriend her in this tragic time--"

Mannard's voice came from behind Coghlan. "Dammit, we've got to look for a simple scheme! A simple purpose! There's a mix-up here! We're linking things that just don't belong together!"

Appolonius gasped. "That is--Mr. Mannard!"

"Why not?" said Coghlan.

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