"This is a Federal agent," I said. "We have just gotten data by satellite that your son, Joe, and another officer are tied up in a closet in the courthouse. Harvey Lee is a witness to a car theft. The man you want is in an old Buick headed for Room 13, Altaprice Hospital, Red­neck. If you drive fast you can intercept him on the road!"

"Jesus!" said the chief. "That confirms what Harvey Lee just reported. We're on our way!"

I hung up.

I beamed. Heller would be stopped.

Torpedo would have his chance!

I thought I had better check up on Krak..I moved her viewer closer to me to get a better look.

She seemed to be just staring down a hall. She

wasn't moving. So I did a fast replay. Maybe I could catch a glimpse of Torpedo.

She had left the land yacht in company with Bang-Bang and walked to the bottom of the hospital steps.

"Now Bang-Bang," she had said, "you go in and tell the doctor you're in pain and somehow get the receptionist to help you to his office. You make him examine you and groan around and keep him there."

Resignedly, Bang-Bang had gone in, attracted the receptionist's attention and had gotten her to inform the doctor he was there. But she had come back and had told him to wait despite his plea that he was sure he would perish any instant. For quite a time he had sat there, rolling about in the chair and groaning. And all that while Krak had been outside. Torpedo, I felt sure, had private plans for when she went inside.

Finally, as Krak had seen through the window from the porch, a tall, blond man in a black coat, who must have been Dr. Price, had come out and, with the help of the receptionist, had gotten the collapsing Bang-Bang into his office.

Krak had slipped in and gotten out of sight at the end of a hall.

Now, as I watched, two nurses sauntered by. Once they were gone, Krak went up the hall, found Room 13 and slipped in.

The room was very plain. A night-black, uncurtained window was in the far wall. White metal tables, chairs and other hospital things stood about.

An old man was groaning on the bed, his face twisted in pain. He focused on the Countess Krak. She was looking at a chart that hung on the bottom of the bed. It said, "Dr. Tremor Graves."

"Do I know you?" said Dr. Graves.

"I am the new therapist," said the Countess Krak.

She reached into her shopping bag. She pulled out a helmet. She slid a recording strip into the slot and pushed a button that said Record. She plonked the helmet onto his head, threw the switch, plugged in the microphone and sat down.

The Countess Krak looked at the black window, glanced at the door, listened for a moment and then got down to business. "Sleep, sleep, pretty sleep."

Graves, who had been threshing about, lay more quietly.

"What do you know about Delbert John Rockecen-ter's wife and son?" she said into the microphone.

Graves went rigid. From under the helmet came a fearful voice. "Murder. Murder. I will not be black­mailed."

"You had better tell me exactly what happened," said the Countess Krak. "Then you can't be black­mailed."

The old doctor twisted restlessly. "This arthritis is worse than blackmail."

"Pay attention," said the Countess Krak. "Your pains will all go away if you tell me and you will never have them anymore."

Dr. Graves, in a hollow, muffled voice, as though it came from some deep tomb, began to talk.

"I know much of this from the girl and from the woman psychiatrist. And I know full well what happened to them in my own hands." He halted, restless again.

"Tell all," said the Countess Krak. "Begin with who you are."

"I am Dr. Tremor Graves, M.D., retired many years, a victim of my own drink and drugs and folly. I owned

my own hospital in Fair Oakes but now even that is gone." He fell silent again.

"Rockecenter and his wife and son," prompted the Countess Krak.

"Delbert John Rockecenter kept his marriage secret. According to the girl it was because his family would be furious if they found out he had married someone so poor. The girl was Mary Styles, the only child of Ben and Charlotte Styles who owned a farm near Fair Oakes. She was stage-struck and went north some nineteen years ago. She got a job in the chorus of the Roxy Theater. That was all known in the local town and nobody much approved.

"Then apparently at a pot party she met Delbert John Rockecenter, then a man of about twenty-five. In a crazy moment they got married in a fast-marriage place. To Rockecenter it was just a joke. To the girl it was her whole life.

"She used to meet him secretly through the back doors of hotels because he was afraid someone, mainly his Aunt Timantha, would find out.

"Then she became pregnant and could no longer hide it. She refused an abortion and in panic he sent her to her parents here. And that's where I came in." He fell silent, twisting about.

"What happened?" prompted the Countess Krak.

"She was only in town a day or two when a psychiatrist showed up, a woman named Agnes P. Morelay, Ph.D., M.D., a newly graduated acid thing. I did not like her.

"This psychiatrist had some men with her. They grabbed the Styles girl and then I found myself talking to Dr. Morelay. This psychiatrist kept the parents quiet-I do not know how. And she wanted me to kill the

girl and say it was suicide. But I wouldn't because I was afraid they would be able to blackmail me, then, for murder. Then this Morelay wanted an abortion done to the girl. But she was too far along and I said that would be murder, too.

"So I promised, for money, to hold the girl in a padded cell they hastily built in my hospital and then, for more money, to kill the mother and baby at birth." He fell silent, very agitated.

"Go on," said the Countess Krak.

"Just before the delivery, news came that the parents had been killed in an auto accident. It was a terrible shock to the girl. But it would have made no real difference. It was a breech birth and she bled to death internally. And I didn't want to be blackmailed by the psychiatrist for killing the baby, so I didn't, but I told Dr. Morelay that I had. I have done many evil things in my life," and the voice became a wail, "but I did not kill the two of them!"

"What did you do with the baby?" said the Countess Krak.

"I made it identifiable so I couldn't be blackmailed and would have some blackmail in my turn if I ever needed it. I tattooed a black dollar mark on the sole of the left foot of the boy and put it in the county poor farm under the name of Richard Roe. I told them it had been found on the hospital doorstep. I filed the mother's death certificate and never mentioned the child. I know psychiatry is for the rich to keep the poor in line. But if Morelay ever seeks to keep me in line, I can threaten to produce the child."

"That has been heard," said the Countess Krak. "But I will now tell you the additional thing that happened and you will remember it that way. And then

you'll have no more pain. Is that all right?"

"Yes."

"What you have said is all correct except for this: Mary Styles gave birth to twins. They were nonidenti-cal." She consulted a note she drew from her pocket. "The one that was born first, you put a dollar mark on the right foot sole. You sent this boy to a doctor friend in Georgia that professional ethics will not let you name. You told him to replace a stillborn child whose parents were Agnes and Gerald Wister, and name it Jerome Ter-rance Wister, and record that it was born in the Macon General Hospital, Bibb County, Georgia. And the other doctor agreed and is since dead. And any date disparity is because of the arrangements you had to make. Now, you remember this clearly."

"Yes."

"Now that we have all this clear in your mind, you will feel compelled, when you awake, to ease your soul of guilt, to write this all up as a formal confession. And only if you do that will your pains go away. And you will feel no more pain.