. They had located him. That meant Franz Polter, for
whom we had been searching nearly four years. And my memory went back
into the past with vivid vision....

* * * * *

The Kents, four years ago, were living on Long Island. Alan and Babs
were fourteen at the time, and I was seventeen. Even then Babs was
something kind of special to me. I lived in a neighboring house that
summer and saw them every day.

To my adolescent mind a thrilling mystery hung upon the Kent family. The
mother was dead. Dr. Kent, father of Alan and Babs, maintained a
luxurious home, with only a housekeeper and no other servant. Dr. Kent
was a retired chemist. He had, in his home, a laboratory in which he was
working upon some mysterious problem. His children did not know what it
was, nor, of course, did I. And none of us had ever been in the
laboratory, except that when occasion offered we stole surreptitious
peeps.

I recall Dr. Kent as a kindly, iron-gray haired gentleman. He was stern
with the discipline of his children; but he loved them, and was
indulgent in many ways. They loved him; and I, an orphan, began looking
upon him almost as a father. I was interested in chemistry. He knew it,
and did his best to help and encourage me in my studies.

There came an afternoon in the summer of 1966, when arriving at the Kent
home, I ran upon a startling scene. The only other member of the
household was a young fellow of twenty-five, named Franz Polter. He was
a foreigner, born, I understood, in one of the Balkan Protectorates; he
was here, employed by Dr. Kent as laboratory assistant.

He had been with the Kents, at this time, two years. Alan and Babs
didn't like him, nor did I. He must have been a clever, skillful
chemist. No doubt he was. But he was, to us, repulsive. A hunchback,
with a short, thick body; dangling arms that suggested a gorilla; barrel
chest; a lump set askew on his left shoulder, and his massive head
planted down with almost no neck. His face was rugged in feature; a wide
mouth, a high-bridged heavy nose; and above the face a great shock of
wavy black hair. It was an intelligent face; in itself, not repulsive.

But I think we all three feared Franz Polter. There was always something
sinister about him, that had nothing to do with his deformity.

When I came, that afternoon, Babs and Polter were under a tree on the
Kent lawn. Babs, at fourteen, with long black braids down her back,
bare-legged