the roar of an approving audience, and that in placeof the blood that was surely springing from her bodythere came fountains of sparkling light. The agony hernerve-endings were suffering didn't touch her at all.Even when the animal had divided her into three orfour parts her head lay on its side at the edge of thestage and watched as her torso was mauled and her limbsdevoured.

And all the while, when she wondered how all thiscould be possible - that her eyes could live to witnessthis last supper - the only reply she could think of wasSwann's:

'It's magic,' he'd said.

Indeed, she was thinking that very thing, that thismust be magic, when the tiger ambled across to her head,and swallowed it down in one bite.

Amongst a certain set Harry D'Amour liked to believehe had some small reputation - a coterie which didnot, alas, include his ex-wife, his creditors or thoseanonymous critics who regularly posted dogs' excrementthrough his office letterbox. But the woman who was onthe phone now, her voice so full of grief she might havebeen crying for half a year, and was about to begin again,she knew him for the paragon he was.

'-1 need your help, Mr D'Amour; very badly.'

'I'm busy on several cases at the moment,' he told her.'Maybe you could come to the office?'

'I can't leave the house,' the woman informed him.Til explain everything. Please come.'

He was sorely tempted. But there were several out-standing cases, one of which, if not solved soon, mightend in fratricide. He suggested she try elsewhere.

'I can't go to just anybody,' the woman insisted.

'Why me?'

'I read about you. About what happened in Brooklyn.'

Making mention of his most conspicuous failure wasnot the surest method of securing his services, Harrythought, but it certainly got his attention. What hadhappened in Wyckoff Street had begun innocently