A werewolf among us

as mere obstacles between Hirschel and the family fortune. He was also suspect because he was the sole living Alderban outside of this immediate family, heir to the entire industrial complex."
    "Which I wouldn't want," Hirschel said. "I can't think of anything more boring than managing wealth."
    "That's one of the reasons I finally rejected you," St. Cyr said. When the others stirred, aware that the number of suspects had just dropped twenty percent, the detective said, "Then I thought that it very well might be Dane."
    "I tell you it's the wolf, the
du-aga-klava
."
    "No," St. Cyr said. "But your superstition and your insistence on supernatural forces being involved were what first put you in a bad light. You're an educated young man, supposedly beyond such foolishness as that. Tina, however, has shown me how a hypno-keyed man might very well adopt such an unreasonable attitude despite the breadth of his education."
    Jubal frowned and pulled on his nose as if he were not artistically satisfied with its proportions. ''What on earth does hypno-keying have to do with all of this?"
    "I won't go into that now," St. Cyr said. "Besides, Tina can give you a much better lecture on the topic than I can."
    Jubal looked at his daughter, perplexed, but she did not raise her eyes to meet his.
    Possibility: Hypno-keying has unsettled Dane Alderban's mind. His reliance on superstitions would seem to indicate this and might also evidence an underlying taint of more serious psychosis.
    At most: neurosis.
    Ps
ychosis
.
    St. Cyr ignored the other half of his symbiote and said, "For a long while, I suspected Jubal." The old man looked away from Tina, his face coloring. "From the beginning, Jubal insisted that I should look outside of the family for the killer, and he would not entertain for a moment any other likelihood. Each time that he attempted to redirect my attention away from a member of the family, I had to wonder about his intent. Now it seems clear that this was only naiveti. Secondly, I was unfavorably impressed with Jubal's lack of emotional response to the deaths of his children. He seemed to view it all with a detached, almost
academic
sterility. Again, it was Tina who made me see how hypno-keying could be responsible for this unemotional reaction. And since Jubal has been a hypno-keyed artist a good deal longer than anyone else in the family, he has had more time to grow even cooler and more impersonal than his children are rapidly becoming."
    "
What
the hell
is
this?" the old man asked. This time, St.
Cyr noticed that Jubal's rage even appeared to be acquired rather than genuine, as if he were imitating an actor he admired. St. Cyr could not be angry with him now. He could only pity him.
    "Finally," St. Cyr said, not answering the question, "Jubal seemed suspect because of his reluctance to allow the family to be armed with deadly weapons. It appears now that this was only due to some genuine dislike for weaponry."
    "Of course it was," Jubal said. "And what motive would I have had for killing my own family?"
    "The same motive Dane had—no motive at all. You could have been mentally unbalanced." He turned immediately to Alicia and said, "Then I suspected you. For one thing, you were the only one in the family who wept at Betty's death. That made you suspect simply because it was a different sort of reaction. When Tina explained that you had undergone hypno-keying much later in life than the others in the family, when you married Jubal, I felt that you were even more of a candidate for prison. What must it have been like, all these years, being at least somewhat emotional and caring in a house of people growing constantly more machinelike, colder, more selfish."
    "It hasn't been easy," she said.
    Jubal looked stunned. St. Cyr thought he really was, for once, what he appeared to be.
    "But," the woman said, I've had the guitar, my music, for comfort."
    "You've left me," Tina said, after a long moment of silence.
    St. Cyr sensed the ripple of surprise that passed through the others, heard Hirschel's quickly drawn breath of disbelief, waited for all of that to subside. He said, "You came on the list of possibilities when I learned that you were the only one in the family who fully understood what hypno-keying had done to you
and
the only one in the family who seemed to be angry that your life had been perverted, against your will, before you were old enough to understand what was happening. It seemed distinctly possible that