"As a matter of fact--I don't. I act upon the greater probability that she is. I don't hire detectives to follow her. Nor do I throw her into situations to test her faithfulness. I admit the possibility that she's unfaithful to me. If evidence came that she was, I might confront her with the evidence. Where does belief become necessary?" "Do you believe your son will become a success in life?" Horace asked. "No. I've done everything I could think of to increase the probability that he will. One of the things I've done is to instill in him the realization that belief is unnecessary in thinking. Surely, as a scientist, you realize that nothing we use in science finds its value or validity from human belief. If, tomorrow, evidence were brought forth that trigonometry is based on fallacy I'm sure that mathematicians would use that evidence to revise their entire field." "But belief is instinctive; as instinctive as thought itself." "I admit it's a natural way of thinking. It has to be weeded out." "So you're sure you don't believe in anything," Horace said slyly. "Such statements are verbal traps," Martin said. "They mean nothing. You want me to imply that I believe I believe nothing, and therefore I have at least one belief. But as a matter of fact I've built up a sort of mental mechanism for discovering beliefs in my thinking and dispelling them by going to the roots and showing myself why I believed. Belief springs up in the mind like weeds in a garden. Constant weeding is the only solution." He glanced at his watch and frowned uneasily. "Eleven o'clock. We'd better break this up and join the women. We'll have to get together again soon. By the way, do you and your wife play Canasta? My wife loves it." They had been moving toward the door. Now they entered the living room, to find the two women playing the game. "Time we were going, dear," Martin said. "And sometime soon make plans to have Horace and Ethel over for an evening of four-handed Canasta." At the front door vows of an early reunion were repeated. But they were never to be fulfilled. On the following Tuesday Horace vanished. * * * * * This time there were no actual eye witnesses. The time was somewhere between seven and seven-ten Tuesday morning; the place; Horace Smith's bathroom. Ethel Smith was in the kitchen preparing breakfast. Horace was in the bathroom. He called out, "Ethel! I've got it!" "What have you got?" But even as Ethel called out, she heard the sound of the electric razor falling to the tile floor, and there was no answer from the bathroom. Nothing but silence and, as she described it later, a feeling that she was alone in the house.