The scream came again... Then suddenly he was surrounded by hooded figures, gripped by hands which hurt him, dragged him forward. He could do nothing - not even cry out; only go where they dragged him, conscious of the increasing heat of the fire, its ever growing brightness...

He saw a slab of stone.

He saw a white body lying upon it, slashed across and across with red; a woman, and she was dead.'

A climax in a strange and violent case. A case that brought Dr Palfrey of Department Z into touch with a man of absolute and evil ambition.