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 huddled wisps of dust clinging together beneath the divan. Then she saw other things. Dirty windows, a smeared mirror. She shuddered. There was a damp chilliness about the room.

Suddenly the rolling doors sixteen feet in front of her parted, and the doctor gestured for her to enter. As she crossed the threshold and the doors snapped behind her, she had a comforting thought that after all Maude knew where she was going. Maude could put che police on the right track if Eddie became alarmed at the prolonged absence of his wife.

The room on the other side of the door was not the hideous room with the "table" as Dot had expected. There was a door, however, in the west wall, which was certainly concealing the chamber of horrors. Dot tried not to look at it, but there was nothing much more attractive in the room they were in. A very old desk with papers in a crazy swirl across it stood beneath a double window. The telephone was on it, and a paper weight in the actual size of a human skull made Dot wonder gloomily if it represented a former patient. A couch with the stuffing bursting forth ran along one wall. There were two chairs, a table, a bookcase, and a great deal of dust. The doctor's diploma hung on the wall, but it was too far above her head for Dot to read, had she so desired.

The doctor sat on the desk, and Dot timidly settled herself on a chair that promptly tilted back six sudden inches and made her gasp.

The doctor laughed but sobered quickly at the blank, frightened query on Dot's face. "That's the desk chair," he said. "Sit there." He gestured to another chair which Dot accepted gingerly.

"Now, what seems to be the trouble?" he asked.

Dot didn't feel much like telling him. He seemed so very young. She wanted an old doctor with a full white