"Who's that?"
"Agent Reems, Mr. Koldstad. He was with us when we woke up. I'm afraid he's dead, sir."
"What about Skinner?"
"Here, sir."
A man stepped into view. He was the same powdery gray mummy color as Reems. But he was alive. His sheepish smile broke through the gray like a whalebone corset emerging from the ashes of a banked fire.
"Skinner. What happened to you?"
"I don't know, sir. I woke up with the rest of you. But a skinny guy with thick wrists ambushed me and threw me into the coal furnace with Reems."
"Was his name Remo?"
"He didn't say."
Phelps spoke up. "It must have been that janitor, sir. It's the only explanation."
"Okay," Koldstad said. "We don't know how we got here. That's fine. We know what we saw and who we saw."
Phelps nodded. "The janitor."
"And the Chinaman who attacked me," Koldstad snapped.
"I thought you said it was a butterfly, Mr. Koldstad."
"It was either a Chinaman dressed as a butterfly or a butterfly wearing a Chinaman's mask. Either way we're going to audit his ass to the conclusion of life on earth and back again to the dawn of time. Now, let's get off this stupid roof."
Jack Koldstad led the way, or tried to. He started to turn in place and kept on turning. Around and around he went, like a slow top. He couldn't seem to stop. The expression on his long face reflected that like a mirror.
The other agents watched in growing confusion. Then concern. Then horror as Jack Koldstad seemed unable to orient himself toward the open roof trap that was plainly in sight.
Finally an agent reached out both hands to steady his superior.
"Thanks," Koldstad said shakily. "I must be more dizzy than I thought."
He started for the roof trap and stepped over it. He kept on going. Right to the edge of the roof. The tips of his shoes bumped the low parapet. Koldstad didn't seem to understand why he couldn't keep going forward.
The agents were right behind him. It was a good thing. They saw that Jack Koldstad was about to step off the roof to his death.
A half-dozen hands plucked at his coat and sleeves and piloted him back the way he came.
"Sir, are you all right?" Phelps asked.
"Let go! Let me go! I can make it. I'm just woozy, that's all."
Just to be sure, the agents held his elbows as others stood by the trap to assist him down.
Jack Koldstad got on the ladder all right. Relief came over the IRS agents' faces. He was climbing down fine. A man started after him. Then another.
When they reached the bottom of the ladder, they found Jack Koldstad on his knees, still clutching the sides of the ladder. He might have been praying. Except he was banging his knees in alternation on the floor.
"Sir, what is it?" asked Phelps in a nervous voice.
"I'm okay. I'm just climbing down. Can't you see? Damn, this is a long ladder."
"Sir, you're on the floor."
Other agents dropped onto the floor as Jack Koldstad looked down and saw that his feet were no longer on the rungs but folded under him.
He looked down, then up, then blank. Then very, very worried.
"What's happening to me?" he asked in a tiny, frightened voice.
"PARTIAL frontal lobotomy," pronounced Dr. Aldace Gerling.
"Yes," agreed Dr. Donald Bex, one of the resident physicians.
"Unquestionably," concurred Dr. Murray Simon.
"But how?" IRS Special Agent Philip Phelps asked, looking down at the Folcroft hospital bed where Jack Koldstad lay sedated.
"You can see the marks here and here," said Dr. Bex, indicating the natural indentations on either side of Koldstad's squeezed-in temples. "A very thin instrument was employed to sever the frontal lobes with absolute precision."
Agent Phelps saw no wounds. Only the rustlike patches of dried blood on either side of Koldstad's temples.
"Who could do that?"
"A brain surgeon," said Dr. Bex.
"Yes, one with consummate skill," added Dr. Simon.
"He claimed it was a butterfly," Phelps said, dull voiced.
Three pair of concerned eyebrows quirked upward. "Yes?"
"A butterfly. One with the face of that Chinaman named Chiun."
"Korean. Chiun is a Korean," said Dr. Gerling
"You know him?"
"I know of him. He suffers from Pseudologica Fantastica."
"What's that?"