"You couldn't possibly understand if I told you. Your elemental mind simply couldn't grasp the mathematical accident that brought me here; nor the ten-million-to-one chance of it ever happening again." Donovan grinned in anticipation. "And you actually think we aren't going to turn you over to Psycho?" "Of course you're not." "And for what reason will we refrain from such?" "Because if you do that, you'll never get your stupid little murder solved." I found myself poised and ready to pounce. "Then you _have_ been holding out." "If you mean do I know who killed Davis--no. If you mean can I find out--yes." "Well, well," Donovan growled. "He's a detective too." Dalrymple split a sneer between us. "It's nothing but a mathematical problem. In the world I come from, students corresponding to your first-graders are started out on far harder equations." "So you can just take a pencil and figure it out, eh?" "Certainly." * * * * * I've tried to remember since, exactly what my reaction to Dalrymple was at that time. Hatred transcended any other emotion I may have had. But there was something else. A feeling of almost personal discomfort springing from the certainty that he wanted us to hate him, or at least didn't care whether or not we did. This was a part of my reaction. And wondering why, also. There was an element of vague fear, too, and of this I'm sure--a vague senseless conviction this crackpot could do all he claimed he could. I remember that when this last came to my conscious mind, I rejected it with indignation. And I knew Donovan was rejecting something too. He turned from Dalrymple with a sneer and said, "We haven't got time to fool with psychos. We've got a murder to solve. Kick this guy out and let the white coats find him all over again." I was sneering too. I took out a pencil and threw it at him and said, "All right, wise guy. There's one. Let's see what you can do." "Have you got a piece of paper?" Almost savagely, Donovan ripped a page off the calendar. It was blank on the back. He threw it on the table and all the time I could see his eyes. They were asking, _Why in the hell am I doing this?_ and trying to cover the question by showing contempt. We glanced swiftly at each other and there was guilt in both our faces; like two realists meeting outside a fortune teller's tent. Then Dalrymple took over. "We have certain facts," he began. "A dead man; the person who admits he went through the physical motions of killing him. We also have the method of producing death--poison--and the setting of the crime." "I think we've had enough of this clowning," Donovan said in a husky voice. Dalrymple ignored the interruption, not even bothering to sneer at Donovan. "As every school child on my planet knows, each of these facts must be given a symbol and must become a part of our exploratory equation."