"Hi, Dad," he said, with that apologetic smile of his. "Sorry to bother you during office hours, but could I borrow fifty? Pay you back next week."

I threw a phony scowl at him. "Running short, eh? Have you been betting on the stickball teams again?"

He cast his eyes skyward, and raised the three fingers of his right hand. "Scout"s Honor, Dad, I spent it on a new turbine for my ElectroFord." Then he lowered his hand and looked down from the upper regions. "I really did. I forgot that I was supposed to take Mary Ellen out this evening. Car-happy, I guess. Can you advance the fifty?"

I threw away my phony scowl and gave him a smile. "Sure, Stevie. How"s Mary Ellen?"

"Swell. She"s all excited about going to the Art Ball tonight--that"s why I didn"t want to disappoint her."

"Slow up, son," I told him, "you"ve already made your pitch and been accepted. You"ll get your fifty, so don"t push it. Want to come down here and pick it up?"

"Can do. And have I told you that you"ll be invited to the wedding?"

"Thanks, pal. Can I give the groom away?" It was a family joke that we"d kicked back and forth ever since he had met Mary Ellen, two years before.

"Sure thing. See you in a couple of hours. Bye, Dad." He cut off, and I looked at the Duke.

"Sorry. Now, you were saying?"

"Perfectly all right." He smiled. "I have two of my own at home.

"At any rate, I was saying that the Criminal Investigation Department of New Scotland Yard has become interested in this experiment of yours, so I was sent over to get all the first-hand information I can.

Frankly, I volunteered for the job; I was eager to come. There are plenty of skeptics at the Yard, I"ll admit, but I"m not one of them.

If the thing"s workable, I want to see it used in England."

Here was another man who wasn"t tied to the "system."

"D"you mind if I ask some questions?" he said.

"Go ahead, Your Grace. If I can"t answer "em, I"ll say so."

"Thanks. First off, I"ll tell you what I _do_ know--get my own knowledge of the background straight, so to speak. Now, as I understand it, the courts have agreed--temporarily, at least--that any person convicted of certain types of crimes must undergo a psychiatric examination before sentencing. Right?"

"That"s right."

"Then, depending on the result of that examination, the magistrate of the court may sentence the offender to undertake psychiatric therapy instead of sending him to a penal inst.i.tution, such time in therapy not to exceed the maximum time of imprisonment originally provided for the offense under the law.

"His sentence is suspended, in other words, if he will agree to the therapy. If, after he is released by the psychiatrists, he behaves himself, he is not imprisoned. If he misbehaves, he must serve out the original sentence, plus any new sentence that may be imposed. Have I got it straight so far?"

"Perfectly."

"As I understand it, you"ve had astounding success." He looked, in spite of what he had said about skepticism, as though he thought the reports he"d heard were exaggerated.

"So far," I said evenly, "not a single one of our "patients" has failed us."

He looked amazed, but he didn"t doubt me. "And you"ve been in operation for how long?"

"A little over a year since the first case. But I think the record will stand the same way five, ten, fifty years from now.

"You see, Your Grace, we don"t _dare_ lose a man. If one of our tame zanies goes haywire again, the courts will stop this pilot project _fast_. There"s a lot of pressure against us.

"In the first place, we only work with repeaters. You know the type.

The world is full of them. The boys that are picked up over and over again for the same kind of crime."

He nodded. "They"re the ones we wait for. The ones we catch, convict, and send to prison--and then wait until they get out, and then wait some more until they commit their next crime, so that we can catch them and start the whole cycle over again."

"That"s them," I said. "When they"re out, they"re just between crimes, that"s all. And that puts the police in a h.e.l.l of a position, doesn"t it? You _know_ they"re going to fall again; you know that they"re going to rob, or hurt, or kill someone. But there"s nothing you can do about it. You"re helpless. No police force has enough men to enable a cop to be a.s.signed to every known repeater and follow him night and day.

"In this state, if a man is convicted of a felony for a fourth time, a life sentence is mandatory. _But that means that at least four victims have to be sacrificed before the dangerous man is removed from society!_"

The Duke nodded thoughtfully. ""Sacrifice" is the word. Go on."

"Now, the type of crime we"re working with--the kind we expect future laws to apply to--is strictly limited. It must be a crime of violence against a human being, or a crime of destruction in which there is a grave danger that human lives may be lost. The s.e.x maniac, the firebug, or the goon who gets a thrill out of beating people. Or the reckless driver who has proven that he can"t be trusted behind the wheel of a car.

"We can"t touch the kleptomaniac or the common drunk or the drug addict. They"re already provided for under other laws. And those habits are not, _by themselves_, dangerous to the lives of others. A good many of our kind of zany _do_ drink or take drugs--about fifty per cent of them. But what they"re sentenced for is crimes of violence, not for guzzling hooch or mainlining heroin."

My phone chimed. It was Lieutenant Shultz, of Homicide. His square, blocky face held a trace of excitement. "Inspector Royall, Inspector Kleek told me to report to you if there was any news in the Donahue case."

"What is it, Lieutenant?"

"We"re pretty sure of our man. Sc.r.a.pings from the kid"s fingernails gave us his blood type. The computer narrowed the list down quite a bit with that data. Then, a few minutes ago, one of the boys found the kid"s clothes stuffed in with some trash paper in the back stairwell of a condemned building just a couple of blocks from where we found her last night.

"And--get this, Inspector!--she was wearing a pair of those shiny patent-leather shoes, practically brand-new, and they have prints all over them! His are over hers, since he was the last one to handle them, and there"s only the two sets of prints! We just now got positive identification."

"Grab him and bring him in," I said. "I"ll be right down. I want to talk to him."

His face fell a little. "Well, it isn"t going to be as easy as all that, sir. You see, we"d already checked at his last known address, earlier this morning, before we got the final check on the blood type.

This guy left the rooming house he was staying in--checked out two days ago, just a short time after the girl was killed. I figured that looked queer at the time, so I had two of my men start tracing him in particular. But there"s not a sign of him so far."

I untensed myself. "O.K. What"s his record?"

"Periodic drunk. Goes for weeks without touching the stuff, then he goes out on a binge that lasts for a week sometimes.

"Name"s Lawrence Nestor, alias Larry Nestor. Twenty-eight years old, six feet one inch, slight build, but considered fairly strong. Brown hair, brown eyes. Speaks with a lisp due to a dental defect; the lisp becomes more noticeable when he"s drinking." He turned the page of the report he was reading from. "Arrested for drunkenness four times in the past five years, got off with a fine when he pleaded guilty. He molested a little girl two years ago and was picked up for questioning, but nothing came of it. The girl hadn"t been physically hurt, and she couldn"t make a positive identification, so he was released from custody.

"Officers on duty in the neighborhood report that he has frequently been seen talking to small children, usually girls, but he wasn"t seen to molest them in any way, and there were no complaints from parents, so no action could be taken."

Lieutenant Shultz looked up from the paper. "He"s had all kinds of jobs, but he can"t hold "em very long. Goes on a binge, doesn"t show up for work, so they fire him. He"s a pretty good short-order cook, and that"s the kind of work he likes, if he can talk a lunch room into hiring him. He"s also been a bus boy, a tavern porter, and a janitor.

"One other thing: The superintendent at the place where he was staying reports that he had an unusual amount of money on him--four or five hundred dollars he thinks. Doesn"t know where Nestor got the money, but he"s been boozing it up for the past five days. Bought new clothes--hat, suit, shoes, and so on. Living high on the hog, I guess."

I thought for a minute. If he had money, he could be anywhere in the world by now. On the other hand--

"Look, Lieutenant, you haven"t said anything to the newsmen yet, have you?"