"Putsyn came around to check up. He didn't like Starret staying there--a key word or a familiar face sometimes triggers the memory. He retroed Starret, who didn't have a gun he could get to in a hurry. Maybe Putsyn had planned to do it all along. He'd built up an airtight alibi when Luise disappeared, so that nobody would connect him with that--and who'd miss a criminal like Starret? "Anyway, that was only part of it. He knew that people who've been retroed try to find out who they are, and that some of them succeed. He didn't want that to happen. So he put an advertisement in the paper that she'd see and answer. When she did, he began to use his machine on her, intending to take her from the present to the past and back again so often that her mind would refuse to accept anything, past or present. "But he'd just started when Starret showed up, and he knew he had to get him too. So he pulled what looked like a deliberate slip and got Starret interested, intending to take care of both of them in the same way at the same time." He leaned against the wall. It was over now and he knew what he could expect. "That's all, but it didn't work out the way Putsyn wanted it. Starret was a guy who knew how to look after his own interests." Except the biggest and most important one; there he'd failed. Borgenese was tapping on the desk, but it wasn't really tapping--he was pushing buttons. A policeman came in and the counselor motioned to Putsyn: "Put him in the pre-trial cells." "You can't prove it," said Putsyn. His face was sunken and frightened. "I think we can," said the counselor indifferently. "You don't know the efficiency of our laboratories. You'll talk." * * * * * When Putsyn had been removed, Borgenese turned. "Very good work, Luis. I'm pleased with you. I think in time you'd make an excellent policeman. Retro detail, of course." Luis stared at him. "Didn't you listen?" he said. "I'm Dorn Starret, a cheap crook." In that mental picture of Starret he'd had, he should have seen it at once. Left-handed? Not at all--that was the way a man normally saw himself in a mirror. And in mirror images, the right hand becomes the left. The counselor sat up straight, not gentle and easygoing any longer. "I'm afraid you can't prove that," he said. "Fingerprints? Will any of Starret's past associates identify you? There's Putsyn, but he won't be around to testify." He smiled. "As final evidence let me ask you this: when he offered you a share in his crooked scheme, did you accept? You did not. Instead, you brought him in, though you thought you were heading into certain retrogression." Luis blinked dazedly. "But--" "There are no exceptions, Luis. For certain crimes there is a prescribed penalty, retrogression. The law makes no distinction as to how the penalty is applied, and for a good reason. If there was such a person, Dorn Starret ceased to exist when Putsyn retroed him--and not only legally."