The man stared at his twitching hand on the floor. He blinked stupidly while his wrist gushed blood. Then, almost automatically, he stepped forward to pick up his hand.
As he shuffled forward, he felt a snick! snick! of pain in his ankles while all sensation from his feet went dead.
It was not until he began toppling forward that he realized that his feet were still sitting calmly on the floor in their shoes and that he was no longer connected to them.
It was too late. He was already falling.
He felt a stinging sensation in his throat and then nothing more as the drop in blood pressure rendered him unconscious.
His hand lay, where it had fallen. His feet remained standing. His body fell to the floor with a resounding thud! His head bounced once and then rolled under the bed.
When his heart quit pumping, the blood quit spurting.
A tiny device on the doorjamb, down near the floor, went zzzt! and then there was silence.
V
When Representative Edway Tarnhorst cut off the call that had come from Harry Morgan, he turned around and faced the other man in the room. "Satisfactory?" he said.