"No, no! No!" the blonde cried. "He's my next to the best lover. He wouldn't murder anybody."
The man, about ninety years old, gray and stooped, sat placidly on what appeared to be the railing of a balcony and contemplated the rolling countryside a hundred stories below. At a signal from Zitts, Zoo switched the machine to two-directional view.
"All right, murderer," Zitts snarled. "Confess!"
The man looked up, started, then almost fell over the rail as he caught sight of Mrs. Brown and Smith.
"No, no! I don't want him brought to justice," the blonde woman cried. "If he loved me enough to commit all those murders I want to marry him."
Zitts pondered this briefly, then said, "That ought to be punishment enough. What have you got to say, murderer?"
The man cowered back, trembled. "I'll confess," he said quaveringly. "But I ask for a reasonably humane punishment like being boiled in oil. Marrying that woman would be more than I can bear."
Zitts nodded understandingly. After all, he was humane even with criminals. And although he was not a man to compromise with crime he could not bear the light of horror in the man's eyes. "I'll take the matter under consideration," he said. "But I promise nothing. If you confess promptly and clear up the mystery, your chance of being boiled in oil will be somewhat improved. I'm waiting."
"It's like this," the man began, wiping perspiration from his brow. "On my ninetieth birth anniversary I decided to have one more fling and retire until I had reached my second youth-hood at the age of a hundred. I visited seventeen of my best sweethearts that day and night, and twelve of my wives. It was rather exhausting."