Mrs. Peel pulled up at the address Steed had given her in their brief conversation. He stood waiting patiently beside the side of the road, holding his brolly in one hand, and wearing his favorite gray bowler. His face was grim. Mrs. Peel stopped the car, and got out.

"Well," she questioned.

"This time, it was a young boy," Steed answered. "His identity was discovered through the school id he carried in his wallet." He motioned for Mrs. Peel to follow him, and led her to a side street, where the skeleton of an adolescent male, still in his clothes, lay against the side of a building. Mrs. Peel shuddered.

"Who could have done such a horrible thing," she murmured to herself. She shook herself, trying to rid her mind of the awful picture. "I finished my research," she turned away from the corpse.

"And," Steed prompted gently.

"There is no known medical reason why these people are decomposing so quickly. And what makes it even stranger, is that the body of the young woman found yesterday, although she was only nineteen, showed several signs of age, which would only be found on someone who was at least sixty. Among the signs were severe osteoperosis in her legs.

Steed's eyes widened. "Then what happened to these people?"

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A young girl of five or six was playing jump rope on the sidewalk in front of her pale yellow colonial house. Her blonde pigtails swung up and down each time she jumped into the air. A man in a black leather trenchcoat walked up to her.

"Hello," he said, with a smile, "What's you're name?"

"My mummy told me not to talk to strangers," the child said, putting out her bottom lip.

"Well, if you tell me your name, and I tell you mine, then we're not really strangers, are we?"

The man's logic won the girl out, she smiled brightly, "I'm Susanna, my friends call me Susie."

"Hello, Susie," the stranger replied. "My name's Dr. Mitchum, but you can call me Mitch. How would you like to see a toy?"

Susie's eyes widened with awe and delight. "Where is it," she asked nervously.

"Just over there," the man pointed toward a small dumpster.

"Okay," Susie dropped her jump rope and took the man's hand, as he led her toward the dumpster, making sure that no one was watching.

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