"Alma," he said, in a voice not loud enough to carry forward over the roar of the motor. "Tell me exactly what happened when Britten said, 'Now is the time.' My back was turned then. Just what did he look like?" Alma swallowed. She composed her face and turned her thoughts inward, remembering. "There was a sudden change," she said. "One moment he was in the trance state, the next moment he was fully aware of his surroundings and in charge of the situation. As though he received a signal at that instant." A signal, Wolf thought. From where? The implication was shocking. Look at what we have, he continued to himself. Britten comes to me, under conditioning, ready to act out his part to the hilt. We question him under deep hypnotherapy and he comes forth with a plausible story. We might have stopped right there, but we got curious and began to ask more questions. He brings out another story. Why? Obviously, red herrings to confuse the issue. To stall for time. We apply more pressure, blank out his original conditioning so that he gives us straight answers to questions, and we are getting along fine. Then, suddenly he snaps out of it and into his 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.