Ann's dreams were broken now by Professor Jacobs, busily, clawing through a card catalog a few feet away, his eyes burning a hole in the back of her head. God, I wish he would leave me alone, she thought silently, scratching down call numbers in her notebook with a dull pencil.

"Mike Boston," she whispered aloud. Heads turned. Her thoughts returned once more to a yacht party in San Francisco two years ago.

It had been a pleasant evening, a bit too cool to her liking, but Mike had conviently stashed an armful of fur coats on board just in case any of the carefully selected females felt a chill. Mike was a pleasant man, not at all like an airplane impression of the handsome forty-ish trickster. Somehow it didn't follow that anyone with a meager job such as his could make enough money to throw lavish parties even one night a year, let alone once a month.

But she was soon to realize his evil depravities: true, he did work for the airlines, but he had been a pilot who had lost his license for smuggling diamonds in from Australia, and it was from the sale of illicit goods that he could afford any high class call girl who struck his fancy. Trudy was one such who now occupied that dubious distinction.

Ann had drunk too much that night, and the vertigo of the rocking motion of the boat combined with the wine, left her a helpless mass of putty. But what did it matter? Who cared what she did? Her drinking increased with intensity and before she could grasp for support, darkness overcame her. When she awoke she was in an apartment, alone except for the moaning and groaning of provocative lovemaking a few feet away on the bed. Must be Trudy, she reasoned, up to her tricks again.

Oh, my head, she moaned silently. God! what have I done to myself? Ann's feeble hand was pressed to her aching forehead when she felt a strange pressure on her arm.