use to me." He smiled wryly. "I didn't know of your profession when I placed Miss Logan in your home and knocked you out."

"You have something to advertise?" Marc asked evenly. "Don't tell me you're reopening Murder Incorporated under new management."

"No," the doctor smiled. "But I've something to advertise just the same ... a button."

"A button?" Marc and Toffee chorused unmusically.

The doctor smiled at their surprise. "This button," he said, and he pointed to a smooth white disc set into the corner of his desk ... an ordinary push button.

Toffee and Marc exchanged glances. Both asked questions. Neither received answers.

"I once had a plan," the doctor continued dreamily, "and I worked for years to perfect a bomb ... a curious sort of bomb. It was to be charged with infectious bacteria, and it could be hurled into the regions high above the earth by catapult. The result would have polluted the very heavens. All the rainfall thereafter, and eventually all the water supplies of the world would have become deadly to human life. Everyone would have died. It would have been ghastly ... a magnificent triumph of science." He shrugged philosophically. "I never did get it perfected."

"Thank heaven!" Marc murmured.

The doctor smiled again, more broadly. "So I worked out something else."

"Eh?"

"Oh my, yes. Only this time I haven't failed. You remember what happened to the rock and Mr. Epperson down on the beach, Mr. Pillsworth?"

Marc nodded dumbly.

"Wouldn't it be dreadful if such a thing happened to the world? Wouldn't it be terrible if the whole world suddenly burst apart and became nothing more than a fleeting vaporous body in the universe?"

"What's he talking about?" Toffee asked frightenedly.

"I'm talking about the button," the doctor said. "Would you believe it, if I told you that I could achieve such a disaster simply by pressing that button? It would all be over in less than a second."

A heavy silence crashed into the 

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