representative for Taffeta Beauty Aids. Please accept this generous ten-ounce bottle of our Diamond Dew Refreshest Lotion...." He reached into his side pocket and brought it out, offered it with the most appreciative smile, his 'you hardly need this' smile.

Her hand did not reach out. "I don't want any. Goodbye!" The door tightened against his foot.

"But madame," his foot did not budge and his smile became both engaging and pleading, "all I ask is a chance to show you our line. Our products sell themselves. Besides, I'm paid on a demonstration basis—so much for every potential customer who receives our free sample and so much for every home demonstration. You wouldn't want me to lose two-fifty when it would take only six and a third minutes of your time exactly to look over one of the most amazing displays ever...."

"Well, I don't know...."

"I know you'll enjoy watching our Tissue Cleanser in action and seeing the new simplicity of our Home Re—...." (oops, he'd almost said it) "... Hair Relustrification Kit. I promise you that your few minutes won't be wasted."

"Yours would be, young man. I don't buy that stuff."

"You may be one of the lucky few women who don't need our products, but I don't think you can say that before you've seen them."

"I never did see such persistence, honest to goodness!" Her face assumed a crabbed smile. "Come along then."

he moved back from the door into the darkness of the house; and the salesman shifted his case back to his left hand, pushed the front door wide and took a quick long step inside. He was just in time to hear the slight click of the closing of a second door in front of him. He reached for the knob, turned it; but the door was locked. The outside door still stood open, caught by the end of the sample case.

The July daylight from outside showed him that he was in a tiny entrance hall not more than forty inches each way. He pulled the case in and by squeezing against the inner door allowed the front door to close. Anyhow, he was inside the house. He rapped sharply on the inner door.

The latch on the front door snapped to and instantly the hall was flooded with light from a tremendous bulb in the ceiling, which, surprisingly, was twenty feet above him.

A harsh voice, tinny with tremendous amplification but unmistakably that of the old woman, filled the hall, "all right, young man. i have the vizer turned on you. let's see the demonstration. i believe you said six minutes. get on with it."

Screening his eyes with his fingers, the salesman scanned the walls and ceiling for the vizer lens, found it beside the five-hundred watt bulb pouring blindingly down on him, on the other side of a speaker grille.

"C-certainly, madame." What a layout. As he automatically laid his case on the floor and opened back the top against the front door, his eyes searched the walls for indications of openings which might mean unexpected defenses such as anesthetic tanks. The only breaks in the two smooth white plaster surfaces which he could see as he squatted before the case were a horizontal row of glass bosses on each side at about the height of his knees.

"Now, since my face," he closed his eyes and flashed a toothy smile, like a video actor, up at the vizer lens, "is subjected to the daily care of Taffeta Products," he turned his face down to the case and gritted his teeth, "I must smear facial muscle softener into the left half to show the action and appearance of muscles which have lost their tonus." He whipped the cover off a small ivorine jar and rubbed his cheek vigorously with a brownish salve. "You will note that this softener also contains a percentage of grime which lodges in the pores."

He heard a gasp from the speaker grille when he displayed a face whose left cheek and brow were sagged,