nows anything more than what he told me."

"Ask him if he knows of any other men with two hearts. I want to know
where they are and what happened to them."

"I'll try to find out."

"You _must_ find out."

"Will you come back soon?"

"I will come back. You must do as I tell you."

"I will do as you tell me."

John Dennis had been sitting by the window so that Rhoda had to stare
into the light. He got up and approached her. She stood up and waited
for him, motionless. He came close and looked at her curiously. His eyes
went up and down her body. He laid a hand on her left breast and pressed
gently. She did not move.

"I will come back. You will not tell anyone I have been here or that we
talked." He left without saying good-bye.

After he was gone, Rhoda stood where she was, motionless, for several
minutes. Her mind was on the place he had touched her. She had never
before experienced such a reaction. Never before had a man's hand, even
on her bare flesh, produced such thrill and excitement. Desperately, her
common sense struggled with this new thing. She dismissed with annoyance
the callow, schoolgirl thought that this was the way love finally
came--in the door, unannounced, to take over a woman's heart and soul
and body. Ridiculous.

The intellectual Rhoda agreed, but the emotional Rhoda continued to toy
with the idea, finding it a fascination, a joy. But there was something
more than the intellectual and the emotional; a deeper, frightening
numbness; a strange paralysis of mind she could not come to grips with;
it kept eluding her even as she reached out for it.

Fear? She wondered.

But mainly she thought of John Dennis, the strange man who had walked in
her door and to whom she had surrendered without a struggle.

_My God. What happened to me? What happened to Rhoda Kane?_

Abruptly she dropped the thought--it did not seem important.

* * * * *

Senator Crane sat in the dining room of the Mayflower Hotel. His guest
was Matthew Porter, a mystery man, also, of the Brent Taber type, but a
little more clearly defined in that he had a title and a department of
government. But far more important to Crane, he outranked Taber.

One other point of importance: Matthew Porter was, in the terms even
Senator Crane used, "something of a fathead."

"Maybe I am a Senator," Crane said jovially, "and maybe we boys up there
think we have a hand in directing you fellows--still I'm fl