of blue light. And the flashes
of light just before Cordell heard his wife and Gilmore fall to the
floor. Even the snatches of conversation he caught while still in the
hall. He couldn't have dreamed all that stuff up--at least not without
_some_ basis."

She had opened her bag and taken out a cigarette. Kirk ignited one of
his kitchen matches and she bent her head for a light. He could see the
flawless curve of one cheek and the smooth cap of blonde hair, and he
resisted the urge to pass a hand lightly across both. Something was
stirring inside the Lieutenant--something that had long been absent.
And, he reflected wryly, all because of a girl who had just finished
confessing to two particularly unpleasant murders.

Naia North raised her head and their eyes met--met and held. Her lips
parted slightly as she caught the unmistakable message in those
gray-blue depths....

The moment passed, the spell was broken and she leaned back in the chair
and laughed a little shakily. "I read about those statements of his in
the papers, Lieutenant. I think perhaps I can at least partially explain
them. As I remember it, there were several Bunsen burners lighted on the
laboratory bench near that window. They give off a blue flame, you know,
and I must have been standing near them when Paul Cordell came charging
in. In his confused frame of mind, he may have pictured me as being in a
ball of flame."

"Sounds possible," the man admitted, frowning. "What about those flashes
of light?"

"You've got me there. Unless they were reflections of sunlight through
the window--from the windshield of a passing car, perhaps."

"And the things he heard you and Gilmore saying?"

She shook her head regretfully.

"There I'm simply in the dark, I don't see how he could have twisted
what little we said into the utterly fantastic nonsense he claims to
have heard."

* * * * *

Kirk rubbed a hand slowly along the side of his neck, still frowning.
"He _could_ have confused that length of metal in your hand as a gun....
Well--" his shoulders lifted in the ghost of a shrug--"it all seems to
add up. Except one thing: Cordell had been tried and convicted, leaving
you in the clear. Why come down here voluntarily and stick your lovely
head in a noose?"

The girl smiled faintly. "'Lovely head', Lieutenant?"

Kirk flushed to the eyebrows. "That slipped out.... Why the confession?"

She said soberly: "I was so sure they'