He took a long, backward step and closed his eyes for a moment as though hoping the whole improbable mess would go away. But it was still there when he opened them again. He turned, went downstairs, and took the receiver off the phone on the wall by the front door. The shapeless landlady came out again. She scowled at Taber. "What are you doing here?" He regarded her with a kind of affectionate weariness. "Have you got a dime, lady?" Gaping, she pawed into her apron pocket and handed him a coin. "Thanks much." He dialed. "Is Captain Abrams there?" There was a wait, during which Brent Taber asked the oddly bemused landlady: "Are you afraid of the dead?" But before she could decide whether she was or not, Taber turned to the phone. "Captain?.... That's right, Brent Taber ... No, right, here in Manhattan. There's been a little trouble. You'd better come over personally." He turned to the landlady. "What's the address here, sister?" And later, with the landlady back in her lair, Brent Taber sat down on the stairs to wait; sat there with surprise at the feeling of relief that filled his mind. He had no feeling of triumph about it; no sense of a job well done. But there was no great guilt at having failed, either. Mostly, he thought, it was the simplification that had come about. There had been so many confusing and bewildering complications in the affair; improbability piled on the impossible; the ridiculous coupled with the incredible. But now, with one stroke of a knife, it had been simplified and brought into terms everyone could understand; into terms Captain Abrams of the New York Police Department would grasp in an instant. A killer was on the loose. * * * * * One of Senator Crane's priceless gifts was a sense of timing. Much of his success had sprung from the instinctive knowledge of when to act. He had a sense of the dramatic which never deserted him. As a result, he had been known to turn in an instant from one subject to another--to dodge defeats and score triumphs with bewildering agility. His preoccupation on this particular day was with a home-state issue--the location of a government plant. After he obtained the floor, he counted the house and noted that only a bare quorum was present. Gradually, the members of the Senate of the United States would drift to their seats. So Crane began reading letters which tended to support his state's claim to the new plant and the benefits that would accrue therefrom. Crane droned on. The Vice-President of the United States looked down on the top of Senator Crane's massive head and became fruitfully preoccupied with thoughts of his own. Then, quite suddenly, the line of Crane's exposition changed. The Vice-President wasn't quite sure at what precise point this had come about. He wasn't aware of the change until some very strange words penetrated: