Page:Fantastic Volume 08 Number 01.djvu/41

 route. Then Wagram came along with his proposition. Clermer was to introduce you to me, you'd make your play, we'd get married. That would give Wagram what he needed to continue his experiments—a go-between, a liaison agent, someone who could help him to keep control. In return, he'd cut you in on his future profits. Because he told you his plans, didn't he, Roxie? He told you that he intended to use me as a sort of zombie, in robbery and murder. And you agreed."

"But it didn't work out that way," Roxie murmured. "I loved you, Steve."

"Yes. You loved me, and you loved living in a crummy little apartment and taking cheap bit parts when you could get them. But all the while you loved money more. And Wagram kept building me up, waiting for the right proposition to come along. When he planned this Hexler affair he thought he had it in the bag. Only that's when you got smart."

Roxie closed her eyes. "No, Steve, no. Clermer didn't tell you this."

"Of course, he didn't, not this part. I had to figure it out for myself. But it's perfectly obvious, isn't it? There were a couple of things even Wagram didn't know about your past. That you worked a season or two with a carney, for example. Long enough to learn how to throw knives—as Wagram found out, just now. More important, my guess is that you probably got acquainted with some mentalist; well enough acquainted so that you understood the scope of Wagram's plans for me and realized they might work.

"It was a simple enough idea. Wagram planted the entire pattern of post-hypnotic suggestion with me when I visited him last week and arranged for you to give me a prearranged signal while I slept which would set the whole series of commands in motion as a sort of dream in which a Voice directed me.

"But even Wagram wasn't fool enough to believe that a dazed somnambulist could get away with a detailed crime. You had to get there first, didn't you? Last night, when you were sure I was asleep, you went to Hexler's. That's why the window was already open, that's why the lock on the window-seat had already been forced, that's why the emeralds were already stolen. And that's why Hexler was already dead when I arrived. You strangled him with his THE SCREAMING PEOPLE