manhood as if trying to draw it deeper. I took my hands from her shoulders and pulled off her panties from underneath.
'What are you doing, Mr. Victor?' she asked, half moaning.
'I just want the experiment to be accurate in every detail,' I assured her as I once again grasped her shoulders for leverage.
'Very well. We'll see it through in the interests of research. But there must be no passion, Mr. Victor. Please remember that. We are not making love.'
'Oh, absolutely not,' I assured her, sliding against her ever so gently.
'You must under no circumstances lose control of yourself and allow your lust to be released.'
'Under no circumstances!' I rammed with all my strength.
Her body was writhing now as if possessed by a demon. Her first explosion came so quickly that it took me by surprise. It was followed by half a dozen more in rapid succession. She screamed aloud with the last one, and I joined her in a long drawn- out moment of ecstatic release. Then we fell apart, momentarily exhausted.
'Mr. Victor,' she said finally, her voice chiding, 'you broke your word. You had sexual congress with me.'
'It takes two,' I reminded her.
'Nothing could have been further from my actions,' she told me seriously. 'While you were giving in to your carnal impulses, I was conquering mine.'
'Again and again,' I mused.
'And what is that supposed to mean?' she asked frostily.
'Look, let's not fight,' I told her. Suddenly I was feeling tender toward her, kookie as she was. In her own perverse way, she had given me great pleasure. I was seized with a sudden desire to show my appreciation. Also, I was feeling a little playful.
I suppose that's why I clapped my hands twice so that the lights went out, made a grab for her, and kissed her soundly. She slapped me in the face – hard! – and the lights popped on again.
'Mr. Victor!' she was truly outraged. 'How dare you take such liberties with me?'
'But after what we just did -' I said confusedly.
'That has nothing to do with it. That was merely an experiment. Nothing more. And it certainly gives you no right to think you can take advantage of the situation to indulge in libertine osculation. Why, I don't even allow my husband to kiss me the way you just did. I shall have to wash my mouth out thoroughly.'
'Gargle away.' I shrugged and zipped up my fly. The motion made me conscious of a sudden need which would make it necessary to zip it down again. 'Is there a bathroom around here?' I asked her.
'Just down the hall. And please see that you return in a frame of mind more suitable to S.M.U.T.' She blew her soundless whistle at the door and it swung open.
It closed behind me and I heard the lock click as I started down the hall. It was still solidly shut when I returned from the bathroom. I knocked at the door. There was no answer. I knocked louder. Same result. I pounded.
'Is there some difficulty, Mr. Victor?'
I turned around to find Peter Highman standing behind me. 'I seem to have locked myself out,' I told him.
'Well, it won't do you any good to knock. The room is completely soundproof. Prudence insisted on that. She's so easily distracted from her work, poor dear.'
'I can see how she would be,' I told him, feeling half sarcastic and half guilty. 'But then how do I let her know I want to come back inside?'
'There is a pushbutton on the wall.' He pointed it out to me. 'Prudence should have told you about it.'
'Oh, well, now I know.' I pushed the button.
He stood there with me for a moment, hovering, as I waited. Nothing happened. The door remained staunchly shut. I stuck my finger on the pushbutton and held it there.
'That will annoy her,' Peter Highman remonstrated mildly.
I took my finger off the button. Still there was no response. 'Why doesn't she answer?' I asked him.
'I can't imagine. Do you suppose she's all right?' He was starting to look genuinely concerned.
'She was all right when I left her just a couple of minutes ago,' I assured him. 'Perhaps the bell is short- circuited or something.'
'Then the door would be out of order, too,' he said positively. 'It's on the same circuit. And if that's the case, she can't get out.'
'Do you think we should break it down?' I asked.
'I'm afraid it's the only way, Mr. Victor. Will you help me?'
We put our shoulders to it. It took some doing, but we finally broke the lock and forced it open. I went hurtling into the room first. I stopped short at what I saw, knowing that my jaw was hanging open but unable to summon up the will to close it. All I could do was stare in horrified fascination.
Prudence Highman lay in the middle of the floor, completely nude. Her clothing, in shreds and tatters, was strewn all over the room as if it had been forcibly ripped from her body and violently thrown every which way. Her body was horribly twisted as if it had been rung by some gigantic mangling machine. Her hands were pressed tightly to her ears as if trying to hold her skull together. Her features were contorted as though by a sudden cerebral stroke. I didn't have to look twice to know that she was dead.
But how? I knelt beside her. Despite the way every muscle in her body was twisted, there wasn't a mark on her. For a crazy instant it occurred to me that perhaps she had strangled herself. But her neck, although broken, didn't have a mark on it. There were no wounds of any kind on her.
Yet Prudence Highman had met violent death in a locked room. All by herself, she had been killed. Yes, she had told me herself that she had the only key to the door – or, rather, the only whistle pitched to open it. But then how had she died? What had killed her? And why?
Most of all, why?
CHAPTER THREE
Why?
And then something happened to make me think I saw the answer. I looked up from Prudence Highman's sorry corpse and found myself staring into the yawning barrel of a.45. Peter Highman's eyes didn't look so timid any more as they gazed at me from behind it.
'Stay just as you are, Mr. Victor,' he advised. 'Ad do just as I say.'
'Shoot,' I said. 'Strike that!' I added hurriedly. 'I mean tell me what you want me to do.'
'Put your hands around Prudence's neck, Mr. Victor. Let your fingertips sink into her flesh.'
It was the conclusion of an instant then that he had killed her and was now trying to frame me by getting my fingerprints on her throat. Right on top of the conclusion, I guessed that as soon as I did what he wanted, he'd pull the trigger of the.45. That way he'd have a nice, neat package to present to the police. It would look like he'd caught me as I finished murdering his wife, not soon enough to save the unfortunate victim, but just in time to blow her killer's brains all over the decor.
Realizing this, I had nothing to lose by fast action. If I did as he said, I'd surely be dead. By doing what I did, I was just playing the long odds to stay alive.
I reached out as if I was about to wrap my hands around her throat. But instead, my hands grabbed an edge of the carpet on which he was standing and yanked hard. The gun went off just as his feet went out from under him. I heard the bullet whistle over my head. I didn't hang around to give him a chance to shoot again. He was still trying to pick himself up as I bolted past him and out of the room. I ran down the hallway, through the living room and foyer, through the offices of S.M.U.T. beyond, down the stairwell, and out of the building. I didn't stop running until I was safely seated on a subway bound for Manhattan.
Then I unscrambled my thoughts. The way the pieces fit, it looked like the old jealous-husband bit. Somehow Peter Highman had found out what Prudence and I were up to in the locked room. My guess was that he'd meant to kill us both, and that if I hadn't gone to the john when I did he would have succeeded. He must have thought I was there, and whatever it was he'd used to kill Prudence would undoubtedly have killed me too if I'd been in the room.
