Of course, he told himself, the thing to do was to think back to that place in time where the spells--the softening--had begun. There lay the real clue. But it was so much easier said than done. He could project his thoughts backwards, after some effort, to the day before when he had jumped into a taxi, shouted to the driver to "follow that car," then found himself in a nervous panic lest they were travelling at a rate of speed in excess of the legal limit. But that was just another small, humiliating example--by no means the beginning. * * * * * He forced his thoughts back still farther, but it was rather like ramrodding a rifle with a ballbat. He arrived finally, by dint of the most extreme concentration, back in the apartment of that sloe-eyed, full-lipped and tempestuous beauty, Dolores Nobella. He had given her a hundred dollars for evidence against her mother, and she had lifted her skirts with a graceful, crimson-taloned hand and inserted the bills deftly in the top of her stocking. All of a sudden it had come to Fleetwood that Dolores, even for a girl with long legs, wore disturbingly tall stockings--and he had turned away, coloring at the collar. He, Fleetwood Cassidy, had blushed, and what was more, now that he thought of it he blushed again. That was the end. Or rather the beginning--the beginning of Fleetwood's strange new emotional pattern. At any rate he felt better having at least established the point of departure, even if it didn't make the riddle of his growing metamorphosis one whit clearer. He boosted himself away from the drinking fountain and continued along the hallway with the eerie feeling that he was moving toward some prearranged meeting with Destiny. He was still a soul adrift, so to speak, when he pushed his way out of the Grande and stood pondering in the afternoon sun. The sidewalk, the street, the traffic, the confused and crowded skyline--all of these things, in turn, presented new problems of identification and orientation, as though he was seeing them all for the first time and didn't know quite what to make of them. And yet.... And yet--what? It was as though his mind had made another sudden turning and again brought him up against the blank wall. The past, even the immediate past that included the events in the Grande Apartments, slipped away from him and were lost. When he tried to think back there were only words in his mind in place of faces, places, events--words like caper, rod, dame, murder. They brought with them no mental association with anything real or experienced. He passed a hand slowly over his eyes. Surely he was losing his mind. With heavy concentration he forced his attention to the row of automobiles along the curb. He had the feeling that one of them belonged to him, but he hadn't the slightest idea of which one it might be. He closed his eyes and waited. The spell would pass. The others had. * * * * *