s Vehrner, with his Vandyke beard and his
Viennese accent as phony as a Soviet-controlled election, who had
preempted the chair at Colonel Hampton's desk. That rankled the old
soldier, but Doctor Vehrner would want to assume the position which
would give him appearance of commanding the situation, and he probably
felt that Colonel Hampton was no longer the master of "Greyrock." The
fifth, a Neanderthal type in a white jacket, was Doctor Vehrner's
attendant and bodyguard; he could be ignored, like an enlisted man
unthinkingly obeying the orders of a superior.

"But you are not cooperating, Colonel Hampton," the psychiatrist
complained. "How can I help you if you do not cooperate?"

Colonel Hampton took the cigar from his mouth. His white mustache,
tinged a faint yellow by habitual smoking, twitched angrily.

"Oh; you call it helping me, do you?" he asked acidly.

"But why else am I here?" the doctor parried.

"You're here because my loving nephew and his charming wife can't wait
to see me buried in the family cemetery; they want to bury me alive in
that private Bedlam of yours," Colonel Hampton replied.

"See!" Myra Hampton turned to the psychiatrist. "We are _persecuting_
him! We are all _envious_ of him! We are _plotting against_ him!"

"Of course; this sullen and suspicious silence is a common paranoid
symptom; one often finds such symptoms in cases of senile dementia,"
Doctor Vehrner agreed.

Colonel Hampton snorted contemptuously. Senile dementia! Well, he must
have been senile and demented, to bring this pair of snakes into his
home, because he felt an obligation to his dead brother's memory. And
he'd willed "Greyrock," and his money, and everything, to Stephen. Only
Myra couldn't wait till he died; she'd Lady-Macbethed her husband into
this insanity accusation.

"... however, I must fully satisfy myself, before I can sign the
commitment," the psychiatrist was saying. "After all, the patient is a
man of advanced age. Seventy-eight, to be exact."

Seventy-eight; almost eighty. Colonel Hampton could hardly realize that
he had been around so long. He had been a little boy, playing soldiers.
He had been a young man, breaking the family tradition of Harvard and
wangling an appointment to West Point. He had been a new second lieutenant
at a little post in Wyoming, in the last dying flicker of the Indian Wars.
He had been a first lieutenant, trying to make soldiers of militiamen and
hoping for orders to Cuba be