She's all we have left, poor kid, and not even ours, really. Helen's baby.

He looked up as the battered cuckoo clock on the mantel clicked warningly. "Time for little girls to be in bed, Joanna. Run along now like a good girl, and get washed." Even as he spoke the miniature doors flew open and the caricature of a bird popped out, shrilly announcing the hour. It cuckooed eight times, then bounced back inside. Joanna watched entranced.

"Bed time, darling," said Jean gently. "School tomorrow, remember? And don't forget to brush your teeth."

"I won't. Goodnight, Mommy, goodnight, Daddy." She turned up her face to be kissed, smiled at them, and was gone. They listened to her footsteps on the stairs.

"Jim, I'm sorry about the things I said." Jean's voice was hesitant, a little ashamed. "It is hard, though, you know it is— Jim, aren't you listening? After all, you don't have to watch the clock now." Her smile was as labored as the joke.

He smiled back. "I think I'll take a walk, honey. Some fresh air would do me good."

"Jim, don't go. I'd rather not be alone just now."

"Well." He looked at her, keeping his expression blank. "All right, dear. How about some coffee? I could stand another cup." And he thought: Tomorrow I'll go. I'll talk to Holland tomorrow.

"Let me get this straight, Jim." Holland's pudgy face was sober, his eyes serious. "You started out by thinking Jean was showing paranoid tendencies, and offhand I'm inclined to agree with you. Overnight you changed your mind and began thinking that maybe, just maybe, she might be right. Honestly, don't you suspect your own reasons for such a quick switch?"

"Sure I do, Bob," Blair said worriedly. "Do you think I haven't beaten out my brains over it? I know the idea's monstrous. But just suppose there was a branch of humanity—if you could call it human—living off us unsuspected. A branch that knows how to eliminate—competition—almost by instinct."

"Now hold on a minute, Jim. You've taken Jean's reaction to this last death, plus a random association with a cuckoo clock, and here you are with a perfectly wild hypothesis. You've always been rational and analytical, old man. Surely you can realize that a perfectly normal urge to rationalize Jean's conclusions is making you concur with them against your better judgment."

"Bob—"

"I'm not through, Jim. Just consider how fantastic the whole idea is. Because of a series of accidents you can't accuse a child of planned murder. Nor can you further hypothesize that all orphans are changelings, imbued with an instinct to polish off their foster-siblings."

"Not all orphans, Bob. Not planned murder, either. Take it easy. Just some of them. A few of them—different. Growing up. Placing their young with well-to-do families somehow, and then dropping unobtrusively out of the picture. And the young growing up, and always the natural children dying off in one way or another. The changeling inherits, and the process is repeated, step by step. Can you say it's impossible? Do you know it's impossible?"

"I wouldn't say impossible, Jim. But I would say that your thesis has a remarkably low index of probability. Why don't others suspect, besides you?"

Jim spread his hands hopelessly. "I don't know. Maybe they do. Maybe these creatures—if they do exist—have some means of protection we don't know about."

"You need more than maybes, Jim. What about Joanna Simmons' mother? According to your theories she should have been well off. Was she?"

"No, she wasn't," Jim admitted reluctantly. "She came here and took a job with my outfit. Said she was divorced, and had lived in New York. Then she quit to take a position in California, and we agreed to board Joanna until she got settled. Warrenburg was the town. She was killed there quite horribly, in a terrible auto accident."

"Have you any reason for suspecting skulduggery? Honestly, Jim? Or for labelling her one of your