Probably the clang of the alarm bell started Sharp as much as the impact of the clock. Certainly it did not hit him hard enough to harm him. But it did startle him, scare him. He reeled backward. Rocks cleared the table with a single leap. He went up into the air like a kangaroo and leaped, feet foremost, at Sharp. His feet struck the business manager full in the stomach. Sharp doubled up like a jackknife, and went to the floor. Rocks fell on top of him. He struck viciously with his fists. Sharp cried in pain and Rocks struck harder. The man was down, but he wasn't out. Rocks drew back his fist for the final blow. It never landed. Down over his shoulder the barrel of a gun flashed. Where it had come from, Rocks did not know. It struck the business manager across the skull. His head popped like the breaking of a rotten egg. He went limp. Rocks looked up. Kennedy stood there. He was holding the pistol with which he had struck Sharp, in his hand. He looked to see if he would need to use it again. He saw he wouldn't. He whirled the gun around on its trigger guard. "Damn me for a fool," he said. "I could kick myself from here to the Loop and back again. I missed a trick and it cost three hundred people their lives." "What trick?" Rocks gasped. "I should have known this gazabo was lying," Kennedy snarled. "I should have known his long cock and bull story about some incredible creature coming out of that box was too fantastic for belief. I should have known he was lying, out damn it, the sight of Morton's body so addled my wits that I was willing to believe the story Sharp told. Oh, he was smooth enough about it. He knew how the weapon he found killed. He knew what it did to Morton's body, and he had to have a fantastic story to account for the way Morton looked. He solved the secret of that box soon after it was brought here. He had a reason for it too. He had been playing the market and he was down on his uppers. If there was a treasure in that box, he wanted first crack at it. He didn't find any treasure in it. Instead he found some kind of a damned weapon in it that came from God alone knows where. When he found Morton had opened the box and was about to catch up with him by weighing the box, he took the obvious out--by killing Morton, using the weapon he had found in the box. He killed McCumber because the old man knew there was something fishy about the box being on the scales. So he killed McCumber--to shut him up." "But those people in the theater?" Rocks whispered. Kennedy exploded. "He needed money, needed it bad. I dug this all up in my investigation today. He was trying to sell the weapon he had discovered to the agents of a foreign power. They wanted a demonstration before they would pay off. So he gave them a demonstration. He showed them how efficient a weapon he had for sale--by killing all the people in a theater." The detective was furiously angry. "And I let myself get taken in by a story of a monster."