"I understand that you found the body of Elsie Turnbull last night."
    "Yes."
    "Yeah, we did," Stevie seconded.
    "Are you familiar with the murder of the Turnbulls, the case that Horus and I are working on currently?"
    "I am."
    "Do you think there's a connection?"
    "Possibly, but doubtful."
    The three of them shared what information they had and considered events.
    Gravedigger sighed. "You realize of course that the greatest possibility is they are two completely unrelated activities with the exception of the fact that the Turnbulls had really bad luck in their lives?"
    They had.
    "But this still means that there is a thing out there which may be being used to commit crimes," Astro-Man pointed out.
    "By someone whose operational style closely matches whoever it was carried off the Turnbull kidnapping ten years ago," Horus concluded.
    "That might be going a little bit too far. We do need to focus on the immediate problem."
    Stevie wanted to know who the Turnbulls were; Gravedigger updated him sotto voce.
    "Wow. You'd think their daughter would have been smart enough to not get kidnapped."
    "She was eight," he was reminded tersely.
    They did have the two names, and a Central Park West address for Belle Barry. It seemed the latter might be worth checking out.
    "I'll drop into her apartment, you can go in through a window and make sure she doesn't get away, and you two can go up the stairs," Astro-Man disposed their forces.
    "This seems to be rather extreme treatment of a suspect," Horus remarked.
    "Efficient."
    "How about I just read her mind from outside?" Of course, depending on one's stance vis a vis the ethics of telepathy, that might be considered still more extreme.
    Astro-Man paused. "We can start with that."
    The two cruised over the city, slowly enough that they did not spend much time waiting for Stevie's car to arrive. Horus hovered outside the apartment and looked to see if someone was there. Someone was. There was also a shapeless void in the mystical landscape. Shifting aspect, Astro-Man listened as well.
    "You damn well have to hide me. What do you mean?! Look, all I know—all I know is that people are digging around into stuff they'd better not be digging around in, and if they're digging around with me you can damn well better believe that it's gonna end up with you." Horus picked up a mental picture of the "you" she had in mind; a man he'd never seen.
    Astro-Man directed Horus to move him up close to the wall of an unoccupied room; changing aspect again, he slipped through it. Seeing the Packard pull up below, Horus informed a very startled Stevie of what the Californian was doing, since Gravedigger's mind had always proven intriguingly impenetrable.
    Inside, Astro-Man found himself in a bathroom and phased his face through the wall to the next room. He saw Belle stalking back and forth with the phone in her hand. Also in the room was an absolutely enormous man with a huge shock of yellow-white hair.
    "I've been helping you out for the last three weeks, and then you helped me out with the body, so now... okay? Everything works out here. You told me where to drop it off, now I'm telling you—because he had to, all right? Besides, I wasn't the one, I just said hit him. Yeah, I—Yeah, I—all I said was hit him. Uh-huh. Right. Look, okay? I already know because I know the cops are paying attention, I'm telling you this is just going to be bad. So you need to get in touch with your lover of old things and have him spirit us the hell out of here. Uh-huh. I'm not hanging for this alone."
    Astro-Man phased his head through the outer wall. "Horus, where's Gravedigger?"
    "Right down below us."
    "Have them go in the front, we can make sure they'd go away. I think they're going to run soon."
    Horus passed on the message, adding, And no, you don't get used to it, to an increasingly jumpy Stevie who was not used to being used as a switchboard.
    "Stay here, keep the engine running," Gravedigger told him.
    "I can do that."
    He broke in through the back without difficulty and climbed the stairs.
    Inside the apartment there was movement. Hanging up the phone, the woman directed, "All right, grab your stuff, we're taking a cab. No wait, screw the cab, we're—"
    "Stop right there," Astro-Man directed in his Saturn form, breaking down the door.
    "Adam, get him!"
    The thing called Adam grunted and turned around. It was an albino gorilla, wearing a men's suit.
    "Get him!" she repeated.
    "Don't do it, boy! Peter and Hazel wouldn't have wanted it that way!" Astro-Man countered, giving the creature momentary pause.
    "Peter and Hazel left you," she hissed. "They abandoned you."
    "She's lying! She had Peter and Hazel killed!"
    Another grunt, this time of bewilderment and distress.
    "I did no such thing! How do you even know this man! Who's been feeding you, who's been taking care of you—"
    "I'm a friend, I'm a friend of Peter and Hazel's."
    "I did not have them killed!"
    The door opened. "Good evening, Miss Barry," Gravedigger said. "You've committed two murders in my town."
    "We have to get away," she whispered.
    "Friend, I'm a friend, Adam," Astro-Man said, ignoring her. "I want to help you." He edged closer.
    Gravedigger left Adam to the visitor, eyes on Belle. "Ten years go you killed Elsie Turnbull."
    Horus had by this time gotten a window open and joined them. He was able to pick from Astro-Man's mind what the Turnbulls looked like, preparatory to creating an illusion that might calm the gorilla.
    Gravedigger went on. "You had her buried in the garden, in the pit that you were having Raymond and the other man burn brush in, and left her there ten years ago, after having had her kept in the back room with the windows boarded up, tied to a chair, for days on end."
    "That wasn't me! That wasn't me. It was all Harold's idea. It was his plan, he's the genius, I had nothing to do with it."
    "Two days ago, you dumped Tiberius Constantine's body in the junkyard." She was backing away from him, looked like she might be about to try something.
    Astro-Man tried to keep Adam's attention. "Look at me, Adam. I'm a friend, a friend."
    Adam made an odd sound and looked past him to where Peter and Hazel's forms had just appeared, giving Astro-Man a worse shock than Adam.
    "Adam, it's okay, you can trust him," Hazel said.
    "Hazel?" Astro-Man said, confused.
    "I'm not taking the fall for this." Belle grabbed a vase and threw it at Gravedigger.
    

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