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West Wing corridor she saw the day-room door, open as she had left it; and slowing her steps now, she began to collect herself. She would take no more abuse from this one, nor yet would she lose control of herself again.
    She entered the day-room with the grace of a virgin queen, sweeping directly to a side table where she set down the bottle and powder, only realizing then she had not brought a glass. But this was as nothing to the sudden certainty that she was alone in the room. She looked up slowly around her. At the windows the light drapes billowed in as before, though somehow now suggesting that this was how he had gone. Miss Mintner moved to the nearest window and looked out. Far across the lawns, Garcia was bent working, his slight figure stooped in the shadow of the pines.
    She turned back to the couch where Mr. Treevly had lain. Briefly, in starting to sit down, she put her hand on the raised headrest, then her whole body went suddenly stiff, throwing up one hand to block the scream in her throat and slowly turning the other, palm up as she closed her eyes quickly tight against the heavy, covering blood on her hand where it had touched the couch. She made a strangling sound and tore out of the room a few steps west into the hall away from the dancing light, to a booth with an open phone inside. She frantically dialed Dr. Eichner’s home number. Waiting, she held off the offending hand, outthrust now against the door of the booth.
    “Hello, Doctor? DOCTOR?”
    As Miss Mintner waited, not understanding, the screen at the far end of the hall, like a rose window of thin spun copper, was burst aside, banging against the wall of the corridor, and Albert, the ward-boy, raced toward her from the patio, his white face strained to wildness.
    A ward-boy, he was actually a middle-aged man, terribly dwarfed and stone deaf, with a speech impediment that agonizingly muddled his every word. He stopped short before Miss Mintner breathing like a tempest, his whole aspect shot with fear and panic.
    “Dey lubing for ub!” he cried and began to rattle the handle of the door violently.
    “Wait a sec, Bert,” said Miss Mintner, not bothering to take her mouth from the phone, “. . . something’s up. Hello! Hello, Doctor?” But she opened the door to Albert and held put one arm for him as though he were coming to nest. Without a word, he seized her around the waist with his tiny, thick arms and began to pull at her viciously. “Twenty-eight!” he shouted, “TWENTY-EIGHT IN HEMORRHAGE!”
    “Wait up, Bert,” said Miss Mintner, “it’s Fred—Dr. Eichner,” and for a minute she managed to keep his hold tentative; but suddenly his arms were locked around her waist like a steel garter, mouth shouting against her chest, his chin digging into the ribs. Miss Mintner clutched at the sill and the open door as she was torn bodily from the booth. The phone jerked out of her hand with a crash and they went reeling onto the corridor floor. Albert was on his feet at once, trying to get her up with short ineffectual kicks and little tugs at her hair and dress. Miss Mintner fought back like a cornered cat, threshing her tiny feet about and striking at his face with the blood-covered hand, until she was up and running for the door, with Albert behind, driving her on, arms flailing above, while now his blood-stained face was dead and impassive, like a wooden mask.

Chapter III
    D R. E ICHNER WAS a man of remarkable bearing, slightly above six feet, slender, with well-set shoulders and a magnificently gray, patrician head. He stood on the Clinic’s shaded front veranda, waiting for his car to be sent around.
    Looking over the sweep of lawn and the gravel drive, past the tight footwalks and overhanging trees, he could see beyond to Wilshire Boulevard where the stirring smoke and dust of property improvements wound up unending through the day.
    At the corner of the building then, the car appeared, a white-frocked garage attendant at the wheel,