original, pre-Britten character, all forty years of him. Therefore there must have been another, deeper level to the control over his mind which we did not even touch. A level activated by a new signal which we did not even detect, a signal which came at a crucial time.

"Now is the time" meant that the stalling was over, that the preparations for Britten's escape were completed.

There were still questions to be answered, many blank spaces to be filled in, but at the present instant there was only one question that mattered. The treatment which Wolf had given Britten—had it been at all effective?

Was it still effective?

There was one way to find out.

Morris Wolf leaned forward and called in a loud voice: "Pyotr Fermineyev!"

The man's head snapped around.

"Cooperation is the key word!" Wolf shouted.

Confusion passed over Britten's face as conflict once more knotted his nervous system.

Wolf threw his second punch immediately. "Tell Jones to cut me loose," he demanded.

"Cut him loose," Britten echoed, in bewilderment.

After an interminable interval, Jones laid down his gun, found his knife, opened it, and slashed the cords from Wolf's arms. Wolf's muscles were already tensed. He snatched Jones' gun, lurched forward, and even as Britten's mouth opened to countermand his order, he slugged Britten with the butt of the pistol, hitting him viciously and hard until he lay unconscious on the floor.

Then he said to Grady, "You'd better get us back to the hospital," keeping the gun in his hand.

But Grady and Jones made no trouble. With Britten out of the picture they obeyed the one obviously in command. Poor boys, Wolf thought. Now they were in need of therapy.

As the hospital hove into view, he said to Alma Heller, "We have just seen the real beginning of psychological warfare. Where it took us a whole roomful of equipment to condition Britten's responses to a trigger word, he was able to do it to 

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