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kept well away from the younger man. Spellman had noticed before how when Barstowe was in the exercise-yard the madmen were always exceptionally subdued—and yet now, for the first time, there seemed to be an indefinable attitude of quiet defiance about them—quite as though they had an “ace,” as it were, up their collective sleeve. Barstowe had noticed it too, and his interest picked up when Larner went over to Spellman to talk to him.
    “Not long now, Nurse Spellman,” Larner quietly said after exchanging reasonable greetings.
    “Oh?” Spellman smiled. “Is that right, Larner? I saw you today, you know, passing round those copies you made.”
    Larner’s face fell immediately. “You didn’t tell anyone, did you?”
    “No, I didn’t tell anyone. When are you going to tell me what it’s all about?”
    “Soon, soon—but isn’t it a pity I don’t know the Naach-Tith formula?”
    “Er—a pity, yes,” Spellman agreed, wondering what on Earth the fellow was rambling on about now. Then he remembered seeing that mention of a so-called “Naach-Tith Barrier” in Larner’s notes in the Cthaat Aquadingen. “Will it spoil the experiment?”
    “No, but…but it’s you I’m really sorry for….”
    “Me?” Spellman frowned. “How do you mean, Larner?”
    “It’s not for myself, you understand,” the madman quickly went on, “what happens to me can’t much matter in a place like this—and the others are as badly off. Not much hope for them here. Why! Some of them might even benefit from the reversals! But it’s you, Spellman, it’s you— and I’m really sorry for that….”
    Spellman considered his next question carefully. “Is the— formula— is it so important then?” If only he could get through to the man, discover the twisted circles in which his mind moved.
    But Larner was suddenly frowning. “You haven’t read the Cthaat Aquadingen, have you?” He made the question an accusation.
    “Yes, yes of course I have—but it’s very difficult, and I’m no—” Spellman searched for the word: “I’m no adept!”
    Larner nodded his head, the frown vanishing from his face: “That’s it exactly: you’re no adept. There should be seven but I’m the only one. The Naach-Tith Formula would help, of course, but even then—” Suddenly Larner caught sight of Barstowe edging closer. “Lethiktros Themiel, phitrith-te klep-thos!” he instantly muttered under his breath, then turned back to Spellman: “But I don’t know the rest of it, you see, Spellman? And even if I did—it’s not designed to keep his sort of evil away….”
    The next day, on the one occasion Spellman snatched to watch the inmates of Hell through his barred window, he again noticed the odd camaraderie between them. He also noticed a thin red welt, absent the previous day, on Larner’s face, and wondered how the madman had come by such an injury. On a whim, not knowing exactly just why he did so, he checked the roster to find out who had been on duty the night before. And then he knew it had been no whim at all but a horrible suspicion—for Barstowe had been on duty the previous night, and in his mind’s eye Spellman pictured the squat, ugly nurse with his stick! And the old unease welled up in his heart as he thought again of the welt on Larner’s face, and of that other inmate who had somehow contrived to gouge out one of his own eyes in “a fatal lunatic fit….”
    • • •
    That night, late on New Year’s Eve—after a day of very limited festivities, marred for Spellman by his growing unease—he received what should have been his first definite warning of the horror soon to come. As it happened he paid little attention: he was off duty and working on his book, but after all the shouting had died down in the ward beneath, Harold Moody, on duty, came to his room to tell him about it.
    “Never saw anything like that before!” he told Spellman after settling himself nervously on the younger man’s bed.