"Wait!" Sarah Fish said. "Mr. Golfin says it will happen when you try to leave." My momentum left me as my hand touched the doorknob. It flowed out of me. I turned around and faced them. "Just how do you know all this?" I said, glaring at the little man. "I suppose I had better tell you," he said. "I'm _Dr._ Golfin." "Oh," I said. * * * * * He reached into his breast pocket and extracted an expensive leather billfold. Looking quite important for his size, he took out a card and extended it to me. "My specialty is--has been," he said, "amnesiacs. I've made a life study of them." I looked at the card. It gave the name, Dr. S. L. Golfin, and an address on Wabash, Chicago. "The phenomenon of amnesia interested me," he went on. "A person suddenly can't remember anything. Perhaps years later memory returns, but there is a gap. Why?" He smiled at me triumphantly. Sarah Fish nodded sagely. "Because...." Golfin lifted his left arm with a flourish and inspected his watch. "One hour and three minutes," he said quietly. Then, "That was the question I asked myself. Why? Unfortunately amnesia is rather rare. The few genuine cases didn't give me enough opportunity to find the answer. I did, however, arrive at several theories about it. And finally I came to the conclusion that amnesia is part of a larger field. I expanded my research to include other phenomena such as prophetic dreams. I was sure I was on the right track, but unfortunately it was impossible to study a person in the process of having a prophetic dream." "I can see that," I said sympathetically. "Exactly," Golfin said, blinking up at me. "However, I asked myself, 'Of the several theories, wouldn't the one that also accounts for prophetic dreams be the more probable one?' And of course it's well known that the more a theory explains, the more probable it is of being true." "Not always," I ventured. He pondered this, then looked at his watch again. "Fifty-three minutes," he said. I swallowed. "But how do amnesia and prophetic dreams tie together?" I asked. "They are basically the same phenomenon," Golfin said, "with one important difference. In amnesia the conscious mind jumps over a period of time and stays there, going on in normal fashion. In prophetic dreams it does the same, _except that it returns to its starting point_." I glanced at Sarah Fish. She was listening intently. It occurred to me that she hadn't heard any of this before either. She was the congenial type. Undoubtedly when Golfin had sprung this murder business on her she hadn't asked questions.