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embarrassing.”
    â€œQuite understandable,” said Madame Karitska.
    Headquarters was a monolithic brick building in the center of town, next to City Hall, and they discreetly entered from the rear parking lot. Swope led her down a maze of halls to an elevator, passing numerous offices, and at last to the chief. He, too, seemed rather monolithic to Madame Karitska: a large man, ruddy-faced, who had risen to his position through the ranks.
    Pruden was already there, and drew up a chair for her facing the chief, while he and Swope took nearby chairs and sat down, waiting.
    The child’s dress lay on the desk between her and the chief. “All right,” he growled, “how’s this done? She talks to herself, this mute child?”
    Being only too accustomed to skepticism, and to antagonism, Madame Karitska explained, “I can only pick up what she was
feeling
. Since she has her sight she would have seen words, but never knowing what they mean. Yet she’s worn this smock for six days and nights, and it’s possible it may tell me something. Reactions. Anger. But not in words, although it’s possible she’s created some sort of primitive vocabulary of her own.”
    He shrugged. “Sorry. I know what you all did when Pruden’s fiancée was taken hostage.” He sighed. “Go ahead,” and to the stenographer, “Take this down, will you?” He handed Madame Karitska the unadorned smock that was brown with dried blood. “See what you can do.”
    â€œThank you.”
    Pruden gave her an understanding smile, and she sat back and fingered the dress lightly, then placed it across her cupped hands and closed her eyes. In a distant room a telephone rang, followed by silence.
    Pruden was surprised to see tears in Madame Karitska’s eyes. She said in a shaken voice, “Dear God, this poor child.”
    Impatiently the chief said, “Scarcely a poor child when she kills her benefactor.”
    Madame Karitska held up her hand to silence him. “Please, I’m getting some very strong impressions. . . . she sits comfortably next to a ‘he-person,’ she calls him, a flood of happiness, feeling his warmth. I have the impression they look at pictures in a book. . . . I feel—
she
feels his kindness.”
    She stopped, frowning. “Then someone enters the room, scarcely noticed—”
    Madame Karitska shuddered and Pruden looked at her inquiringly.
    â€œA she-person to her,” she said. “This she-person has entered the room and the child looks up. The she-person stands behind the seated man and is holding ‘one of the sharp things from the wall—’ ”
    â€œThe daggers,” broke in Pruden. “Epworth had a collection of daggers on the wall.”
    â€œâ€”and she pushes it into the he-person’s back.”
    â€œImpossible,” protested the chief. “Impossible.”
    Madame Karitska paid him no attention. “The man falls forward, facedown on the floor—is this true? Did he? The child—Jenny—throws herself across his bleeding back, making guttural moaning sounds, pulling and tugging at him to bring him back to the couch, not understanding. I feel her shock and grief. This she-person—this woman—pulls her to her feet, places the knife in the child’s now-bloody hand, then drops it on the floor and pulls her to the door, where she is forced to turn the knob with her bloody hand. The she-person mouths a word the child can’t hear but knows she’s being shoved out, the door closes behind her and, bewildered and frightened the girl runs down the stairs—many, many stairs—into darkness. Is it the basement? She hides there, in the darkness.”
    There was a long and incredulous silence following this until the chief said, “What woman? There was no woman except—”
    â€œExcept Mrs. Epworth,” Swope said in a stunned voice.