"Oh, lots," she assured him. "I've collected reams of data. He could be almost as much of a menace as he thinks he is, in some cases, but I haven't begun to slip yet. As I have told you all along, this is just a game, and we're both playing it strictly according to the rules."
"That's good. Keep it that way, my dear." Samms signed off and his daughter returned her full attention—never noticeably absent—to the handsome secretary.
The evening wore on. Miss Samms danced every dance; occasionally with one or another of the notables present, but usually with Herkimer Herkimer Third.
"A drink?" he asked. "A small, cold one?"
"Not so small, and very cold," she agreed, enthusiastically.
Glass in hand, Herkimer indicated a nearby doorway. "I just heard that our host has acquired a very old and very fine bronze—a Neptune. We should run an eye over it, don't you think?"
"By all means," she agreed again.
But as they passed through the shadowed portal the man's head jerked to the right. "There's something you really ought to see, Jill!" he exclaimed. "Look!"
She looked. A young woman of her own height and build and with her own flamboyant hair, identical as to hair-do and as to every fine detail of dress and of ornamentation, glass in hand, was strolling back into the ball-room!
Jill started to protest, but could not. In the brief moment of inaction the beam of a snub-nosed P-gun had played along her spine from hips to neck. She did not fall—he had given her a very mild jolt—but, rage as she would, she could neither struggle nor scream. And, after the fact, she knew.