The morning sun poured through the high windows of the courtroom, wasting its brightness on a scene of sullen dementia. Judge Carper's heavy face had achieved a shade of dyspeptic vermillion in record time this morning. Even the flies clung to the walls in muted terror as his gavel banged on the substantial wood of the bench and set the room atremble. "Silence!" the judge roared. "Silence, damnit! And if one more defendant makes just one more crack about the sanity of any other defendant I'll lock the whole crew of you up and melt the key down for a watch fob." He ran his shaking hand over his forehead. "Besides, so far I don't even know which ones of you are the defendants and which are the complainants." He turned to the policeman. "Do you know?" "I'm not sure," the cop admitted uneasily. "I think they're all both." "Both what?" the judge asked confusedly. "Both defendants and complainants. As far as I can tell everybody's mad as hell at everybody else. It sort of goes around in a circle." "And I'm burned up at the lot of them," the judge said malignantly. "Who are those two over there without any clothes on?" "I think they lost their clothes in the crash," the cop said vaguely. "The guy is really two guys, so it's hard to tell." "What?" "There are really two guys like that," the cop said. "Dressed alike." The judge peered across at Marc with deep speculation. "I only see one of him," he said dryly. "The other one disappeared," the cop said, casting down his eyes. "He--well, sort of evaporated." "Evaporated? What are you talking about?" "It's a fact, your honor. It happened on the way in. The only way I can explain it is that one minute he was there and the next he just sort of melted away." "Rooney," the judge said, "have you lost your wits?" "It wouldn't surprise me, judge," the cop sighed. "Everyone else has. Why not me?" "There's only one man there, Rooney," the judge said harshly. "And judging by those skinny legs of his, maybe not even that." "Yes, sir." "Are you bucking for another vacation, Rooney, is that it?" "Well, your honor, I do feel tired. It seemed to come over me all of a sudden, after I ran into all those people." "All right, we'll see what can be done. In the meantime let's have no more of this falderol about one man being two, only one of them evaporated." * * * * * "Yes, your honor," Rooney said, greatly saddened. "There's only one man. I guess I was mistaken." "Or drunk," the judge murmured sourly and turned his gaze to the assortment before him. "Now what happened with this gang?" "They were all in a wreck that involved three cars. The young lady in the underskirt was driving the first one. She claims that the dark man with the scar tried to murder her by forcing her to drive a car with a broken steering gear." "What does he say?"