Wanniston looked at Gerd Lel Rayne. Gerd shrugged. Wanniston's intellect was most certainly capable of telling the lie detector a lie and making the insensate machine believe it true. Gerd knew that Wanniston knew that—and Wanniston knew that Gerd knew it also. But Gerd was intelligent enough to know that Wanniston was smart enough to avoid murder or running afoul of any man-made law. Any killing would have come up immediately, and the evidence would be natural and honesty a matter of self-defense.
Wanniston was no fool.
They brought in the lie detector and Wanniston slipped the headset on, and grasped the handles.
The lieutenant said: "John Wanniston, did you murder Peter Wilks?"
Wanniston started. Wilks!
The magnitude of the plot amazed him. It was as nasty a frame as he could imagine. He knew that it would be as air-tight as the machinations of sixteen men could make it—and he wondered whether the operations of seventeen men might not be more like the truth. Wilks was ruined; had little to live for and knew it. He—and the rest—a sacrifice was not too unquestionable. Their crime—justified by themselves in the thought that better it be one of them than all of them.
