ching the bobbing
purse, hadn't realized it as yet. And they were delayed in realizing it
by a diversion from the other side of the auditorium.

"I can't hold it down any longer, Mr. Kennedy!" a woman gasped out.
"It's taking me up into the air!"

"Hold on, Annie!" I shouted back. "I'm coming!"

* * * * *

A chastened and subdued Swami sat in my office the following morning,
and this time he was inclined to be cooeperative. More, he was looking to
me for guidance, understanding, and didn't mind acknowledging my
ascendancy. And, with the lieutenant left in the outer office, he didn't
have any face to preserve.

Later, last night, he'd learned the truth of what happened after he had
run away in a panic. I'd left a call at the hotel for the lieutenant.
When the lieutenant had got him calmed down and returned my call, I'd
instructed the lieutenant to tell the Swami about the Auerbach
cylinders; to tell the Swami he was not a fake after all.

The Swami had obviously spent a sleepless night. It is a terrible thing
to have spent years perfecting the art of fakery, and then to realize
you needn't have faked at all. More terrible, he had swallowed some of
his own medicine, and was overcome with fear of the forces which he had
been commanding. All through the night he had shivered in fear of some
instant and horrible retaliation. For him it was still a case of There
Are Mysteries.

And it was of no comfort to his state of mind right now that the four
cylinders we had finally captured last night were, at this moment,
bobbing about in my office, swooping and swerving around in the upper
part of the room, like bats trying to find some opening. I was giving
him the full treatment! The first two cylinders, down on the floor, were
pressing up against my closed door, like frightened little things trying
to escape a room of horror.

The Swami's face was twitching, and his long fingers kept twining
themselves into King's X symbols. But he was sitting it out. He was
swallowing some of the hair of the dog that bit him. I had to give him A
for that.

"I've been trying to build up a concept of the framework wherein psi
seems to function," I told him casually, just as if it were all a
formularized laboratory procedure. "I had to pull last night's stunt to
prove something."

He tore his eyes away from the cylinders which were over exploring one
corner of the ceiling, and looked at me.

"Let's go to