Page:Fantastic Volume 08 Number 01.djvu/31

 why she should be excluded; this is as much her problem now as it is yours. Perhaps you ought to have confided in her fully before—I might have been mistaken in urging you to keep the whole truth from her. Why don't we arrange to get together, the three of us, some day next week, and go over the entire matter? I won't try to deceive you, Steve; this dream of yours disturbs me because of its latent symbolic content."

"It disturbs me because I still don't think it was a dream."

I stood up, brushing past his desk. My arm swung out, dislodging the folded copy of the afternoon newspaper. I stooped, picked it up. My eyes scanned the headlines, halted at a routine little paragraph at the bottom of the front page.

"What are you reading?" Wagram asked.

"Here," I said, extending the paper and moving towards the door. "You read it. Maybe you'll find it interesting."

He took the paper from my hand, but I didn't wait. I walked out of there, then started to run. Somehow I couldn't face what would happen when he read what I had just read—the little paragraph about the death, last night, of James P. Hexler, retired industrialist and art-collector, who had been robbed of a fortune in uncut emeralds and smothered with a pillow in his own bed at 100 Azure Drive

''Police. I had to go to the police.''

I knew that, but this isn't what made me run all the way down to Sunset Strip.

Sooner or later I'd go to them or they'd come to me. Right now, I must see Roxie first. I must see her and tell her what had happened. Roxie would know how to help.

Suddenly I realized the truth. Roxie was more important to me than Dr. Wagram. He had failed me, just now; he hadn't been able to comprehend the facts and so he hadn't been able to help. Roxie had never been given a chance to help. I owed her that. And I owed myself that, too.

Because I couldn't conceive of how or why I'd kill a perfect stranger. And I had to know, before the police stepped in.

So I hailed a cab in front of the Bank of America and gave him the apartment address. And I sat forward on THE SCREAMING PEOPLE