e all in one motion and my hand streaked for my
armpit and came out with the forty five. It was a woman and she was
carrying nothing more lethal than the fountain pen in her purse. She
blanched when she saw my forty-five swinging towards her middle, but she
took a deep breath when I halted it in midair.

"I didn't mean to startle you," she apologized.

"Startle, hell!" I blurted. "You scared me out of my shoes."

I dug her purse. Beside the usual female junk she had a wallet containing
a couple of charge-account plates, a driver's license, and a hospital
card, all made out to Miss Martha Franklin. Miss Franklin was about
twenty-four, and she was a strawberry blonde with the pale skin and blue
eyes that goes with the hair. I gathered that she didn't belong there any
more than I did.

"I don't, Mr. Hammond," she said.

So Martha Franklin was a mental sensitive.

"I am," she told me. "That's how I came to be here."

"I'm esper. You'll have to explain in words of one syllable because I
can't read you."

"I was not far away when you cut loose with that field-piece of yours,"
she said flatly. "So I read your intention to come here. I've been
following you at mental range ever since."

"Why?"

"Because there is something in that safe I want very much."

I looked at her again. She did not look the type to get into awkward
situations. She colored slightly and said, "One indiscretion doesn't make
a tramp, Mr. Hammond."

I nodded. "Want it intact or burned?" I asked.

"Burned, please," she said, smiling weakly at me for my intention. I
smiled back.

On my way to Rambaugh's bedroom I dug the rest of the thug's safe but
there wasn't anything there that would give me an inkling of why he was
gunning for me. I came back with one of his needle-rays and burned the
contents of the safe to a black char. I stirred up the ashes with the nose
of the needier and then left it in the safe after wiping it clean on my
handkerchief.

"Thank you, Mr. Hammond," she said quietly. "Maybe I can answer your
question. Rambaugh was probably after you because of me."

"Huh?"

"I've been paying Rambaugh blackmail for about four years. This morning I
decided to stop it, and looked your name up in the telephone book.
Rambaugh must have read me do it."

"Ever think of the police?" I suggested.

"Of course. But that is just as bad as not paying off. You end up all over
the front pages anyway. You know that."

"There's a lot of argumen