"Take your grasping claws off it," Chadwick said levelly, "before I lose my temper. I'll see that the pills are handled properly."

"Properly for whom?" Agatha rasped. "You'd hog them all for yourself, that's what you'd do!"

Both of them stood their ground. The struggle was apparently one to the finish; obviously whichever of them emerged the victor would be in control of the other forever after. Deep within them primitive instincts had been set to work to choose the chieftain ... or chieftainess, as the case might be ... of their proposed "organization." As the contest left the field of invective and entered onto the more taxing one of physical, brute force, they both seemed to forget their captives. Dropping their guns to the floor, first Agatha, then Chadwick, they shoved their free hands in each other's faces and began to push. At this, Marc and Toffee, with a little cry of triumph, acted as a team in swooping away from the lounge and retrieving the guns from the floor.

Looking somewhat like an infant Annie Oakley, Toffee stepped back, aimed her pistol in the general direction of the battling Harpers and shouted, "Stick 'em up!"

But the Harpers had other things on their minds. Chadwick had just let out an enraged bellow as Agatha's even, white teeth had bitten into one of his fingers.

Toffee looked helplessly at Marc. "What'll we do?" she asked.

Marc was already doing it. Aiming at the ceiling, he brought a shower of plaster thunderously down over the scene of the battle. The Harpers instantly became transfixed, a frozen study of hand-to-hand combat. Leaning over the table, their faces almost together, they stared fixedly at each other through a screen of fingers. They had the look of people suddenly remembering something very important.

"Hands up!" Toffee piped.

The Harpers came to life in the same moment and reacted with their customary single-mindedness. Two pairs of hands shot into the air, and as a result the bottle crashed to the top of the desk, pills rolling in all directions. The desk and portions of the floor around the desk seemed to have been the scene of a recent snowstorm.

"I'll keep them covered," Toffee told Marc. "You get the police."

"The police?" Marc said. "How will we explain who they are? With their new faces, I mean. For that matter, how will we explain who we 

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