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Doctor Fawcett, at the State Asylum. Can you run me there?”
    “I’ll phone first.” Using Dakin’s instrument, he talked to his station, cut off, said to Graham, “There will be no autopsy on Dakin. They can’t dissect pulp!” He put away the vernier, pocketed the vial, opened the door. “Come on. Let’s have a look at your asylum—some day it may be home, sweet home!”
    Darkness was a shroud over the Hudson. A sullen moon scowled down through ragged clouds. Incongruously, a distant neon repeatedly flashed its message in blood-red letters fifty feet high: BEER HERE. Observing it, Wohl subconsciously licked his lips. Fidgeting on the sidewalk, they waited for the gyrocar which Wohl had ordered over the phone.
    The machine hummed down the street, its long floodlight blazing. Wohl met it, said to the uniformed driver, “I’ll take her myself. We’re going to Albany.”
    Climbing into the seat, he waited until Graham had plumped beside him, eased the machine forward.
    Graham said to him, warningly, “We’re in a hurry—but not that much.”
    “What d’you mean?”
    “Please, I’d like to get there in one lump. I don’t function so well in several parts.”
    “Nobody functions so well when you get after them. Are you a stockholder in the local graveyard?” Wohl’s beefy face quirked. “There’s one comfort about hanging around with you.”
    “What’s that?”
    “I’ll die with my boots on.”
    Graham smiled, said nothing. The car picked up speed. Twenty minutes later he was hugging the rail as they cornered. Still he said nothing. They pelted northward, reached Albany in two hours—good going even for Wohl.
    “This is well outside my official stamping-ground,” Wohl commented, as they pulled up outside their destination. “So far as I’m concerned, I’m off duty. You’ve merely brought a friend along.”
    The new State Asylum sprawled its severe, ultra-modern architecture over a square mile of former parkland. It was very evident that Doctor Fawcett was the leading light in its administration.
    He was a skinny little runt, all dome and duck’s feet, his top-heavy features triangular as they sloped in toward a pointed goatee beard, his damn-you eyes snapping behind rimless pince-nez.
    His small form even smaller behind a desk that looked the size of a field, he sat stiffly upright, wagged Graham’s copy of Webb’s jottings. When he spoke it was with the assertive air of one whose every wish is a command, whose every opinion is the essence of pure reason.
    “A most interesting revelation of my poor friend Webb’s mental condition. Very sad, very sad!” Unhooking his pince-nez, he used them to tap the paper and emphasize his pontifications. “I suspected him of having an obsession, but must confess that I did not realize he’d become so completely unbalanced.”
    “What made you suspicious?” Graham asked.
    “I am a chess enthusiast. So was Webb. Our friendship rested solely upon our mutual fondness for the game. We had little else in common. Webb was entirely a physicist whose work had not the slightest relation to mental diseases; nevertheless, he showed a sudden and avid interest in the subject. At his own request, I permitted him to visit this asylum and observe some of our patients.”
    “Ah!” Graham leaned forward. “Did he give any reason for his sudden interest?”
    “He did not offer one, nor did I ask for one,” replied Doctor Fawcett, dryly. “The patients who interested him most were those with consistent delusions coupled to a persecution complex. He concentrated particularly upon the schizophrenics.”
    “And what may those be?” put in Wohl, innocently.
    Doctor Fawcett raised his brows. “Persons suffering from schizophrenia, of course.”
    “I’m still no wiser,” Wohl persisted.
    With an expression of ineffable patience, Doctor Fawcett said, “They are schizoid egocentrics.”
    Making a gesture of defeat, Wohl growled, “A nut’s a nut whether in fancy