Amateur in Chancery

by George O. Smith

"There is a subtle difference between them."

"This he knows, but he does not know what it is."

"There is a delicate difference in warmth. One button will be faintly warmer than the other."

"Harla has felt them."

I dropped the third-person address and spoke to Teresa as if she were but one end of a telephone line. "Harla," I said, "only part of the difference lies in the warmth to physical touch. There should be another kind of warmth. Are you not affected by a feeling that one is better than the other?"

Harla's reply came direct through Teresa: "Why yes, I am indeed drawn to the warmer of the two. Were this a game I would wager on it. But that is emotion and hardly suitable as a guide."

"Ah, but it is!" I replied quickly. "This is our frame of reference. Press the warmer of the but—"

I was violently interrupted. Wallach shook me violently and hurled me away from Teresa. Frank Crandall was facing the girl, shouting, "No! No! The warm one will be the red one! You must press the green—"

And then he, too, was interrupted.

Displaced air made a near-explosive woosh! and the tunnel car was there on its pad. In it was a nightmare horror holding a limp Holly Carter across its snakelike tentacles. A free tentacle opened the door.