as done!"

Beatrice looked deftly through Madame Sin's meager wardrobe. Keane
searched dresser and table and bureau drawers. He wasn't looking for
anything definite, just something that might prove the final straw to
point him definitely toward the incredible goal he was more and more
convinced was near.

He found it in the top of the woman's suitcase.

His fingers were tense as he unfolded a business letterhead. It was a
carbon copy, filled with figures. And a glance told him what it was.

It was a duplicate of the financial statement of the Blue Bay
Development Company--that statement which was held highly confidential,
and which no one was supposed to have seen save the three Blue Bay
officials, and a bank officer or two.

Keane strode to Madame Sin's phone, and got Gest on the wire.

"Gest, can you tell me if Kroner and Chichester are still out of the
hotel?"

Gest's voice came back promptly. "Kroner is here with me now. I guess
Chichester is still at his home on Ocean Boulevard; at any rate he isn't
in the hotel----"

"Ascott!" Beatrice said tensely.

Keane hung up and turned to her.

"The woman--Madame Sin!" Beatrice said, pointing toward the still,
lovely form on the chaise-lounge. "I thought I saw her eyes open a
little--thought I saw her look at you!"

Keane's own eyes went down a bit to veil the sudden glitter in them from
Beatrice.

"Probably you were mistaken," he said easily. "Probably you only thought
you saw her eyelids move.... I'm going to wind this up now, I think. You
go back to your suite, and watch the time. If I'm not back here in two
hours, go with the police to the home of Chichester, the treasurer of
this unlucky resort development. And go fast," he added, in a tone that
slowly drained the blood from Beatrice's anxious face.

_5. Death's Lovely Mask_

Chichester's home sat on a square of lawn between the new boulevard and
the bay shore like a white jewel in the sun. It looked prosperous,
prosaic, serene. But to Keane's eyes, at least, it seemed covered with
the psychic pall that had come to be associated in his mind with the
dreaded Doctor Satan. He walked toward the blandly peaceful-looking new
home with the feeling of one who walks toward a tomb.

"A feeling that might be well founded," he shrugged grimly, as he
reached the porch.

He could feel the short hair at the base of his skull stir a little as
he reached the door of this place he believed to be the latest l