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matches. Loomis reached into his coat for his lighter, but she found her matches first and lit her own cigarette. Now Loomis did look at her for the first time, noting the sheen of her auburn hair, the high cheek-bones, the pert nose, as the flare of the match momentarily illuminated her attractive features. She put the matches up on the dashboard, but they slipped off as the car lurched to the right. Loomis picked them up off the carpeted floor. They said, "The-Rabbit-in-Red Lounge—Entertainment Nightly." An odd name, he thought, and wondered whether the young lady frequented the place and what sort of entertainment one might be fortunate enough to see there.
    "Ever done anything like this before?" he asked.
    "Only minimum security."
    "I see," he said, failing to keep the pity out of his voice.
    "What does that mean?" she said defensively, picking up his tone.
    "It means . . ." He gazed at her, assessing her maturity and concluding she didn't have too much of it. "It means I see , that's all."
    "You don't have to make this any harder than it already is," she said forthrightly.
    Loomis's smile was devoid of humor. "I couldn't if I tried."
    "The only thing that ever bothers me is their gibberish. When they start raving on and on . . ." She finished the thought with a shiver and a look of disgust.
    "You don't have to worry about that," said Loomis. "He's scarcely spoken a word in years."
    Suddenly, in the middle distance, the car's headlights detected a ghostly shape about twenty-five yards away. Loomis leaned forward and peered, eyebrows knit in dismay. "Something is wrong."
    Marion lifted her foot from the gas pedal and hovered it over the brake, awaiting instructions as she squinted through the windshield into the troubled night. The wraithlike figure had momentarily disappeared. Then five of them appeared. Patients clad in windblown, rain-soaked white gowns, wandering or cavorting around the field outside the fence. Their eyes were hollow and almost zombielike, their faces ravaged by decades of incarceration.
    "Since when do they let them wander around?" Marion asked cynically.
    "They don't," Loomis replied unnecessarily, gesturing impatiently for her to drive the rest of the way to the gate, where there was a telephone. "Drive, drive!"
    A figure stepped in front of them, a male patient with an insane grin and red-rimmed eyes. Marion had to stop the car to avoid running him over. Loomis thrust open his door and jumped out. He trotted over to the bewildered escapee and asked him a question. The man gesticulated with wild, gnarled hands. Loomis's eyes clouded with fear. He rushed back to the car and hopped in, rivulets of rain trickling down his bald head into his face and beard. "Pull up to the entrance!"
    "Shouldn't we pick him up?"
    "Move it!"
    Marion pressed the gas pedal. The rear tires whined on the wet pavement, then grabbed. The powerful car almost knocked the hapless inmate down. "What did he say?"
    "He asked me if I could help him find his purple lawnmower."
    "I don't think this is any time to be funny," Marion declared indignantly. "After all, I'm . . ."
    "He said something else," Loomis said ominously. "He said, 'It's all right now. He's gone. The evil's gone.' "
    They exchanged a serious look. "What does that mean?"
    "Wait here," he said, leaping out of the still-rolling car and rushing to the guard booth. He slid the door open and stepped on something soft. He knelt over it. It was the guard. His head was twisted on his neck as if some giant hand had tried to unscrew it. The man's eyes bulged hideously, and his tongue lolled over bloody lips. "My God!" Loomis gasped as he reached for the phone.
    Inside the car, Marion drew nervously on her cigarette as the escaped inmates did their danse macabre around the parking lot. The driving rain drummed on the roof and hood, and Loomis's contorted face in the guard booth as he shouted his message to the main house did not make her feel any easier.
    All at once there was