hout my having taken a dig at the opener beforehand.
The arrival was all I needed to crack wide open in a howling fit of
hysteria. It was so pat. I couldn't help but let myself go: "Well! This
looks like Old Home Week!"

Miss Gloria Farrow, Registered Nurse, did not respond to my awkward
joviality. Her face, if anything, was darker than my thoughts. I doubted
that she had her telepathy working; people who get that wound up find it
hard to even see and hear straight, let alone think right. And telepathy
or perception goes out of kilter first because the psi is a very
delicate factor.

She eyed me coldly. "You utter imbecile," she snarled. "You--"

"Whoa, baby!" I roared. "Slow down. I'm a bit less than bright, but what
have I done now?"

I'd have slapped her across the face as an anodyne if she hadn't been
Mekstrom.

Farrow cooled visibly, then her face sort of came apart and she sort of
flopped forward onto the bed and buried her face in my shoulder. I
couldn't help but make comparisons; she was like a hunk of marble, warm
and vibrant. Like having a statue crying on my shoulder. She sagged
against me like a loose bag of cement and her hands clutched at my
shoulder blades like a pair of C-clamps. A big juicy tear dropped from
her cheek to land on my chest, and I was actually surprised to find that
a teardrop from a Mekstrom did not land like a drop of mercury. It just
splashed like any other drop of water, spread out, and made my chest
wet.

Eventually I held her up from me, tried to shake her gently, and said,
"Now what's the shooting all about, Farrow?"

She shook her head as if to clear her thinking gear.

"Steve," she said in a quietly serious tone, "I've been such an utter
fool."

"You're not unique, Farrow," I told her. "People have been doing damfool
stunts since--"

"I know," she broke in. Then with an effort at light-heartedness, she
added, "There must be a different version of that Garden of Eden story.
Eve is always blamed as having tempted Adam. Somewhere, Old Adam must
have been slightly to blame--?"

I didn't know what she was driving toward, but I stroked her hair and
waited. She was probably right. It still takes two of a kind to make one
pair.

"Steve--get out of here! While you're safe!"

"Huh?" I blurted. "What cooks, Farrow?"

"I was a nice patsy," she said. She sat up and wiped her eyes. "I was a
fool. Steve, if James Thorndyke had asked me to jump off the roof, I'd
have asked him