“Take it easy.” His voice was unruffled, steadying. “You’ve got things bottled up inside of you that you need to get out into the open. I don’t think you need an alienist after all. I think you need someone to talk to. Go ahead. I’m listening.”

“Thanks.” The word was a faint whisper which barely carried to him across the stillness. “If you only knew-”

Shayne did know, sort of. He remembered reading the papers, and he could guess at other things that hadn’t been in print.

He said, “You’re not going crazy, of course. Count that off your list. You wouldn’t realize it if you were.” He paused. “About your mother-”

“She’s coming this afternoon. From New York.”

“You told me that.”

“I hear them talking about me when they think I’m not listening. I heard them last night-talking about having me watched when Mother arrives.” She shuddered. “That’s what gave me the idea of coming to you-myself.”

“You’ve said ‘they’ several times. Who are ‘they’?”

“Doctor Pedique and Monty. Mr. Montrose. He’s Mr. Brighton’s private secretary.”

Shayne turned and lounged against the window, elbows hooked on the sill.

“What basis is there for their fear? What’s it all about? Do you hate your mother?”

“No! I love her. That’s-what they say is the matter.” A rush of blood crimsoned Phyllis’s cheeks beneath Shayne’s steady gaze. She lowered her eyes.

This seemed to him to be getting them nowhere. “Suppose you tell me just what they do say.” Shayne’s voice was gently impersonal. “Don’t make any excuses or explanations. Let me sort things out for myself first.”

Phyllis Brighton clasped her hands together and began Jo speak in a glib, curiously sickening patter, as though the words had been committed to memory and she was delivering them without letting herself consider their meaning. “They say I’ve got an Electra complex and it’s driving me insane with jealousy because Mother married Mr. Brighton and I’ll kill her before I’ll let him have her.”