Joe ran into the kitchen, inspected the door. It was intact, and so were the nails. He ran out of the house and peered through the glass bricks of the basement windows, but could see nothing because of the wavy pattern in them that permitted only light, but not vision through them. He came back into the house. "What's wrong, Joe?" asked Pearl, her face pale. "The President's been assassinated and that's what's wrong," said Joe heavily. "And if that isn't a crime, what is?" Pearl ran to the television and turned it on. In a moment they were listening to almost hysterical voices, and watching equally hysterical scenes, as television cameras wheeled into position in the nation's capital and took shots of milling throngs, and announcers interviewed individuals who gave varied incoherent statements and expressions of grief that were obviously inspired only by the desire to be on television. * * * * * Abruptly the scene switched to a newscaster in the newsroom of the network, and a more calm voice was giving a coherent, though tense account of world news. "Even as the President fell before an assassin's bullet," he was saying, "violence is flaring in all parts of the world. In Barcelona a mad mass of rioters is looting the city, led by rebel army factions who have taken over the arsenal and established a new government. The trouble seems to have broken out with unbelievable swiftness, and already the U. S. Air Base has been attacked and it has been reported that some fighting is actually going on. Air Force property will be defended, according to a Pentagon spokesman, in spite of the possibility of a rift with the government of the country, although just who is the government at this moment cannot be said with any certainty. "In Algiers, all communications have been cut off, but it is reported that French citizens are being murdered wholesale in a ghastly blood bath. "In Paris, gangs of looters are battling police, and similar scenes are being enacted in a dozen other European cities. "But here in America there is a sort of a stunned silence and inactivity as the nation learns of the murder of the President. No one seems to know who fired the shot, but there is a growing rumor that it was a senator who performed the deed. Impossible as it seems, there were five senators in the White House at the time, and none of them can be located now, in the confusion that has engulfed the home of the President. No one seems to know which five they were...." * * * * * The scene switched once more to a camera near the White House and incoherence reigned supreme. "_That's_ covering the news?" snorted Joe. "But what's that you were saying before about hearing noises all morning from the basement? I thought the Devil had been quiet as a mouse for weeks?" "He has. And that's exactly what he sounds like now," Pearl said.