"There's just one thing you can do to make me believe that you're even partially innocent," he ground out, "that you have even one decent thought or one decent instinct anywhere in you." "What is that, Lensman? I'll do it, whatever it is!" "Release your thought-screen and send out a call to the Big Shot." The girl stiffened. This big cop wasn't so dumb--he really _knew_ something. He must die, and at once. How could she get word to-- Simultaneously Kinnison perceived that for which he had been waiting; the Narcotics men were coming. He tore open the woman's gown, flipped the switch of her thought-screen, and invaded her mind. But, fast as he was, he was late--almost too late altogether. He could get neither direction line nor location; but only, and faintly, a picture of a space-dock saloon, of a repulsively obese man in a luxuriously furnished back room. Then her mind went completely blank and her body slumped down, bonelessly. Thus Narcotics found them; the woman inert and flaccid upon the bench, the man staring down at her in black abstraction. VI. "Suicide? Or did you--" Gerrond paused, delicately. Winstead, the Lensman of Narcotics, said nothing, but looked on intently. "Neither," Kinnison replied, still studying. "I would have had to, but she beat me to it." "What d'you mean, 'neither'? She's dead, isn't she? How did it happen?" "Not yet, and unless I'm more cockeyed even than usual, she won't be. She isn't the type to rub herself out--ever, under any conditions. As to 'how,' that was easy. A hollow false tooth. Simple, but new--and clever. But why? WHY?" Kinnison was thinking to himself more than addressing his companions. "If they had killed her, yes. As it is, it doesn't make any kind of sense--any of it." "But the girl's dying!" protested Gerrond. "What're you going to _do_?" "I wish to Klono I knew." The Tellurian was puzzled, groping. "No hurry doing anything about her--what was done to her has been done, and no one this side of Hades can undo it--unless I can fit these pieces together into some kind of a pattern I'll never know what it's all about--none of it makes sense--" He shook himself and went on: "One thing is plain. She won't die. If they had intended to kill her, she would have died almost instantly. They figure she's worth saving; in which I agree with them. At the same time, they certainly are not planning on letting me tap her knowledge. They may be planning on taking her away from us. Therefore, as long as she stays alive--or even not dead, the way she is now--guard her so heavily that an army can't get her. If she should happen to die, don't leave her body unguarded for a second until she's been autopsied, and you know she'll _stay_ dead. The minute she recovers, day or night, call me. Might as well take her to the hospital now, I guess." The call came soon that the patient had indeed recovered.