The insane things he did culminated in orders to take my life."

He left the platform. Crobe, somewhat revived, stood up. "Now, ladies, you can plainly see that insanity rages. The diagnosis of this case is so monstrous that in all the annals of psychiatry there has never been one like it. I have simply look calm and professorial brought up the case to show you how the claws of insanity have dug into the very depths of our culture look like that's the end."

"Wait!" cried Lady Arthrite. "Who is this case and where is he?"

"Look toward the door. Is the man who informed me of this case still here?"

"Yes," said an usher promptly.

An actor dressed as a warder of the Royal prison came in reluctantly. He was wearing a mask. "Doctor Crobe," he said, "I told you about this case for the good of the society. If it got out that I had informed you of what the government is doing, it could cause me to lose my job."

"Tell them tell them they will all regard your identity as inviolate."

The actor turned. "The man is being held in the Royal prison to avoid his being brought to trial. He sits in his cell, protected. What is feared is that if he ever was put before a judge, the things he would divulge would shake the government to its very foundations. Even if they tried him, it would be done in secret. What we warders fear is that he will be released upon the society through a back door and strew the streets with the gruesomely mangled bodies of the poor and innocent. While I know naught of your psychiatry, from just viewing him in his cell, I would say that, in a long career of handling malefactors, he is easily the worst I have ever seen. He defies all descriptions! Yet THEY are hiding and defending him."

"What is his name?" said Lady Arthrite Stuffy in an enraged voice.

"His name," said the actor, "is Soltan Gris!"

Like a maestro conducting a vast orchestra, J. Walter Madison went to work on Soltan Gris.

The highest social circles of Voltar were buzzing about the scandal and, quite in addition to demands from their wives, publishers and editors could not turn anywhere without colliding with the outrage.

The first headlines read:

MYSTERIOUS PRISONER

HIDDEN BY AUTHORITIES

And this was quickly followed up with:

WHO IS THE

GOVERNMENT REFUSING

TO BRING TO TRIAL?

And then:

IDENTITY REVEALED!

PRISONER IS

APPARATUS OFFICER

SOLTAN GRIS!

Quickly then, edition after edition and day after day, the documented catalogue of the crimes of Apparatus Officer Soltan Gris began to appear, each one juicier than the last.

They began with:

APPARATUS OFFICER

GRIS ILLEGALLY

EXPORTED METALS

Immediately after that:

APPARATUS OFFICER

GRIS ORDERED MURDER

OF OWN OFFICE HEAD

AND CLERKS

And then:

APPARATUS OFFICER

ORDERS MURDER OF

MOTHER OF

DEFENSELESS BOY

And a picture of the sobbing Twolah and faked photos of his mother's body and funeral began to send ripples of rage through the population.

It was at this time that Lord Turn received a viewer-phone call from no less a social leader than Lady Arthrite Stuffy.

"Lord Turn," said Lady Arthrite, "I do not think you realize that public opinion is growing. WHEN are you going to bring that prisoner to trial?"

"Lady Arthrite," said Lord Turn, "would you please keep your nose out of the affairs of the Royal prison?" And hung up.

This, as it was recorded, gave the Daily Speaker an exclusive:

JUDGE TELLS PUBLIC

"HANDS OFF GRIS!"

This, of course, made all the other papers livid: they had been scooped. They began to bombard Lord Turn with tricky calls of their own. This made Lord Turn furious. He was so angry that he refused to explain anything to anyone. The headlines grew worse and worse.

Now, unfortunately for Soltan Gris, when he had been blackmailing the Provocation Section of the Apparatus, the head of that section had been radio-recording back to his own office down by the River Wiel during the whole time that he had been shadowing Gris to get the goods on him. And a recording of every single one of these crimes Gris had pulled at that time existed, with pictures and sound, in the Provocation Section. Gris, unaware of this, thought he had handled it with the final murder of that chief. And now Madison began to feed these crimes one at a time to the press.

HYPNOTIST MURDERED

BY APPARATUS

OFFICER GRIS

And then:

SUPPLY COLONEL

MURDERED BY

APPARATUS OFFICER GRIS

And then:

ELECTRONICS WIZARD

SPURK FOULLY SLAIN

BY APPARATUS OFFICER

GRIS

BURNS THIRD OF

ELECTRONICS INDUSTRIAL

QUARTER TO HIDE

VICIOUS CRIME

And the final one of the series was complete with photographs of a body falling ten thousand feet.

BROTHER APPARATUS

OFFICER SLAIN IN

DASTARDLY EFFORT

TO HIDE DAMNABLE

CRIMES

The footage was even shown on Homeview, which was beginning to take an interest.

The question was starting to buzz through the streets: If the government had an officer who had been committing all these crimes, just why was it refusing to bring the villain to trial?

But Madison was saving a piece de resistance.

When Bawtch had been overheard chortling "he had Gris now" and about a forgery, he had NOT been talking about the Royal signature forgeries at all. At that time, he didn't even know about them.

Gris, in his carelessness, had left the old cloak of Prahd's beside his office desk. He had intended it to be found beside the River Wiel. And in that cloak he had wrapped a very bad forgery, a suicide note. Unfortunately, he had written it on a piece of paper which had been under a document when he stamped it for Bawtch. And dimly under the writing on the Prahd suicide note could be seen the identoplate outline of Soltan Gris!

The recorded strips of the dead Provocation Section officer had shown Soltan Gris calling on Prahd Bittle­stiffender.

All evidence for a murder charge was there. So Madi­son, through one of his reporters, called the attention of the Domestic Police to the crime.

The Domestic Police traced it down, accompanied by a horde of reporters, and found that young Dr. Prahd Bittlestiffender was nowhere to be found. They then issued a warrant for the arrest of Soltan Gris.

Young Dr. Prahd, the most promising cellologist to graduate for some time, was extolled by his professors as a real loss to his profession. The act of cutting him down in his early youth could be looked upon as a crime against the whole population, who so desperately needed his services. The act of a madman!

HEADLINES!

Then the Domestic Police asked Lord Turn for the custody of Gris so they could try him and execute him. It was, of course, refused.

HEADLINES!

The questions began to race through the population. Why was the government protecting this raving lunatic of an Apparatus officer? Why would they not let him be brought to trial?

Written by his ex-Royal Academy of Arts reporter, Madison began to circulate the words and music of a bal­lad. It was printed on a single sheet and seemed to be the creation of an unknown. Shortly it was being reprinted in the press and sung on every hand. It went:

In the name of the government he murdered and kitted.

Many an innocent victim he has chilled.

He is an Apparatus officer!

Why does the government love this cur?

He grows fat on his victim's blood,

Then with glee stamps them in the mud.

Coddled and protected for his crime,

They extoll his virtues as sublime.

We are demanding his life should cease.