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at her. Karen found herself forcing the smile as she came up before the desk. The light from the lamp was brighter here, reflecting in the bulging eyes.
    The bulging eyes— and the brown cord looped tightly around the woman’s neck —
    Karen gasped; involuntarily, her hand swept out to touch the nurse’s shoulder. And the stiffly seated figure fell face forward across the desk.
    No point in screaming. No point in reaching for the telephone on the desk, not when the cord had been ripped free and used as a strangler’s noose.
    No point in hesitating, either. The time to get out of here was now, with the door still open. Karen turned, and it was then that she saw the smoke.
    It curled out and up from underneath the other door, the closed door at the far side of the reception desk. Karen remembered that door from her one previous visit; behind it was Dr. Griswold’s private office.
    She moved toward it now, wrenched at the knob, flung the door open wide. For an instant her eyes flickered shut, and then she steeled herself to gaze at what lay beyond the threshold.
    With a surge of relief she realized the room was unoccupied—and it was not aflame.
    The smoke came from the fireplace in the far wall: the smoke, and the charred, pungent reek of burning paper heaped upon the glowing embers beneath.
    There were scraps of paper wadded and discarded all across the carpet, and a score of empty manila folders; more of the same littered the desk top, and a few odd sheets dangled from the open drawers of the metal file-cabinets in the corner of the room.
    Now Karen was conscious of another scent—had something been spilled across the contents of the fireplace to start the blaze? Something that wasn’t kerosene or gasoline, something with an acrid stench she couldn’t recognize?
    Karen advanced, staring down at the blackened bits of paper that remained. There was nothing to indicate the source of the other odor, the source of the buzzing which sounded faintly but persistently in her ears.
    The buzzing—
    Karen turned and saw the small door opposite the fireplace, saw the flood of light from beneath it. The buzzing came from behind that door.
    Almost before she was consciously aware of her movements Karen was at the door, opening it.
    A chair was set in the center of the small, white-walled room; a very special chair with padded arms and headrest, a chair with wiring apparatus extending from it like the threads of a spider web.
    Karen recognized it for what it was, a unit set up for electro-shock therapy. The buzzing sound emanated from the cabinet behind it, the cabinet from which the wires sprang. Each wire terminated in electrodes, clamped to the bare skin of the temples and neck and wrists of the figure strapped into the chair. Karen recognized the figure, too.
    “Doctor Griswold!”
    Griswold didn’t reply. He merely sat there, the buzzing current throbbing through him, his rigid body pulsing ever so slightly with the force of the discharge. The electrodes were fastened into place by strips of surgical tape, but there were no sponges beneath them to shield the skin. And now, Karen realized the source of the other scent.
    It was the odor of burning flesh.

CHAPTER 5
    W hen Karen ran out of the sanatorium her only thought was to get away.
    It wasn’t even a thought, merely an impulse as blind as the panic which prompted it, as blind as the fog she fought as the car careened along the winding wooded road leading back to the highway.
    In a way, the difficulty of driving was a blessing; fighting the wheel somehow helped to fight the panic, and by the time she reached the fork in the road, Karen was almost calm. The dimmed fluorescence of the service station indicated that it was closed for the night, but she saw the outside phone booth and realized she must stop and make the call.
    Later Karen couldn’t remember exactly what she’d told the police, but it was enough to get action. She wouldn’t give them her name, though she