y there.

The third floor room was the redhead's. She was coming out of the
bathroom with a terrycloth bathrobe and a towel turban on when I
looked in. She slid the robe off and began dusting herself with
powder. That skin _did_ cover her.

She turned and moved toward a vanity against the wall that I was on
the other side of. The next thing I knew, the window was flung up and
she had a gun on me.

"Come right in--Mr. Weldon, isn't it?" she said in that completely
controlled voice of hers. One day her control would crack, I thought
irrelevantly, and the pieces would be found from Dallas to North
Carolina. "I had an idea you seemed more curious than was justified by
a help-wanted ad."

"A man my age doesn't get to see many pretty girls," I told her,
making my own voice crack pathetically in a senile whinny.

She motioned me into the room. When I was inside, I saw a light over
the window blinking red. It stopped the moment I was in the room. A
silent burglar alarm.

She let her pale blue eyes wash insolently over me. "A man your age
can see all the pretty girls he wants to. You're not old."

[Illustration]

"And you use a rinse," I retorted.

She ignored it. "I specifically advertised for old people. Why did you
apply?"

It had happened so abruptly that I hadn't had a chance to use the
Stanislavsky method to _feel_ old in the presence of a beautiful nude
woman. I don't even know if it would have worked. Nothing's perfect.

"I needed a job awful bad," I answered sullenly, knowing it sounded
like an ad lib.

* * * * *

She smiled with more contempt than humor. "You had a job, Mr. Weldon.
You were very busy trying to find out why senile psychotics starve
themselves to death."

"How did you know that?" I asked, startled.

"A little investigation of my own. I also happen to know you didn't
tell your friend Sergeant Pape that you were going to be here
tonight."

That was a fact, too. I hadn't felt sure enough that I'd found the
answer to call him about it. Looking at the gun in her steady hand, I
was sorry I hadn't.

"But you did find out I own this building, that my name is May
Roberts, and that I'm the daughter of the late Dr. Anthony Roberts,
the physicist," she continued. "Is there anything else you want me to
tell you about yourself?"

"I know enough already. I'm more interested in you and the starvation
cases. If you weren't connected with them, you wouldn't have kno