"I don't know for sure," the woman replied. "It might be anything ... even common dirt. It doesn't matter. The point is that whatever it is, it's been charged so that when it's exposed to air, it just naturally blows everything around it all to hell and gone. Mr. Epperson opened the other one, and I guess that's why he was vaporized. I ducked around the rock just in time."

"But that's impossible!" Marc protested.

"I know it," the woman said flatly. "It's as impossible as a three dollar bill. But it works, just the same. Look what it did to old Eppy!"

Marc winced. He couldn't help the feeling that nothing good could come from such blatant familiarity with the dead. "Where did you get those things?" he asked, changing the subject.

"They're the brain child of a certain Dr. Herrigg," the woman replied. "I always thought there was something offside about the old crow, and now that I know it, I'm going...."

Suddenly, she was interrupted by a nasty cracking sound, and Marc quickly took up his old courtship with the rock, lest it be the overture to another explosion. He sensed, rather than saw or heard, the woman dropping to his side.

"What was that?" he whispered. Then he turned to the woman and started back in horror. She was lying face-down in the sand, and the hole at the base of her skull was clearly visible. The matter of the fluid running in her veins was settled beyond all argument; it was blood.

Blindly following a first impulse, Marc leaped to his feet to see where the shot had come from. He regretted it almost instantly. No sooner had he gotten on eye level with the top of the rock, than there was a second cracking sound and a bullet whined viciously past his ear, like a great, lethal gnat. He hugged the rock again, wondering incongruously if he were to spend the rest of his life in a crouching position. It seemed such a vulgar position in which to die. In the brief moment of his exposure, he had seen a small, grey-haired figure, with a pointed, sharp-featured face, and a gun to match. The sight had done much to shake Marc's confidence in his own future. Indeed, he imagined that this, approximately, was what the mystery writers were referring to when they mentioned a "tight spot." And the sound of footsteps descending the stairway convinced him that his own personal spot was swiftly becoming downright constricting. His eyes, wide and wild, frantically ran the length of the beach.

There was only one 

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