"That's quite possible. But we've done the best we could at this end." The doctor's voice dropped. "I don't think there's going to be time for anything else, Terry." "You mean that he--" The doctor nodded. "He's dying. I've seen the signs. It's as though he's lost all will to live." * * * * * Bryan looked at the man on the bed again, grim speculation in his eyes. His voice was solemn and soft. "Maybe I'm just a superstitious Irishman, Dave--but I think I know what's the matter with this fellow. I knew it the first time I looked at him. He's lost something--something you can't see with microscopes or X-ray machines. It's something damned important--and that's why he's dying. What he's lost, Dave, is ... his soul." "I'm not laughing, Terry. Oddly enough, I have the same opinion. A doctor keeps running into situations like this, where ideas thrown into the discard by the so-called scientific attitude have to be dusted off and put back to work." There was silence. An elevator made distant noises somewhere in the building. White-clad nurses moved crisply by in the hall beyond the open door. Late Spring sunshine was bright behind the drawn shade at the window. Life and movement, the mundane and familiar. But in this room thoughts probed beyond the earthly facade and found a mystery, a wonder as old as Man. Bryan moved his muscular shoulders as though against an invisible resistance. Then, slowly, still fighting that resistance, he reached into the breast pocket of his rumpled tweed jacket and produced a pencil and a wrinkled but otherwise clean envelope. Most reporters carried notepads about with them; some even went in for stenographers' shorthand notebooks. But to Bryan news was something more than mere details. It was a thing of human and emotional qualities, and these he carried in his head like songs--some gay and humorous, many more tragic and sad. This characteristic had given his by-line its great popularity with _Courier_ readers. When he needed to remember details at all--comparatively unimportant facts like dates and numbers--he recorded them on envelopes. "Anything else you can tell me about this man, Dave? Who he is, where he lives?" The doctor fingered a slip of paper from a pocket of his white smock. "Here's his name and address. I had an interne copy them down from the stuff we found in his clothes. Knew you'd want them, Terry." He grinned briefly, a grin of real affection, then sobered. "The police did some checking on him. I talked to a detective just before you showed up. "Seems this patient lived alone at a rooming house. A widower. No family. Worked as a dental technician for a small company in the Loop. It appears he was in the habit of spending his evenings in Grant Park. He was found there this morning, you know, just the way he is now." "Grant Park," Bryan echoed. "That makes three. Three, Dave." The doctor looked puzzled. "I don't get it, Terry."