I left Rachel Matthews's hospital room and ran down the hallway to see if I could catch whoever it was that had been hiding in her room. The only person I saw was the on-call doctor. "Hey, Doc, you see anybody strange running around here just now?" I asked.

"You mean... besides you?," he said, in the that haughty, condescending tone doctors are required to perfect during their residency.

"No," I sneered, "actually I meant besides you, cheese log."

"Who are you? What are you doing here? Would you like me to call security?"

Now he was getting huffy. I hate huffy. I grabbed both ends of his stethoscope and whirled him around, dashing him against the wall. "My name is Diamond. I'm a P.I. And I would like you to tell me if you saw anyone running down the hall just now before I check your heartbeat with this thing by ramming it down your throat and setting it directly on your heart."

"There's no call for violence," he said.

"There are exceptions to that rule. I just got attacked by the poor loon in 201 who is suffering from some bizarre withdrawal symptoms, I'm having olfactory hallucinations, and I'm a little cranky right now. Don't mess with me." The doctor sniffed. He sniffed again. Then he sniffed me. I pinched his nose. "You wanna knock that off?"

"I didn't see anyone in the hall, but if you're having phantom smells, so am I. I thought it was you. Kind of... musky?"

I let him go. "Yeah, musky. That's it. What do you keep around here that smells musky?"

"Nothing. Perhaps we should investigate. A hospital simply shouldn't smell musky."

I nodded, but suggested it might be a better idea if I investigated while he re-hooked Rachel up to her various machines. He wasn't at all pleased hear that her IVs were currently spewing all over the floor, and didn't seem very sympathetic that they'd gotten that way when she attacked me.

I rounded the corner and headed to the exit door at the end of the corridor. Whoever it was had to have gone through there, and was no doubt long gone. I was just about to step through myself when I saw something on the floor.

"What's that!?" came a voice from behind.

Startled, I whirled around to give the doctor another harsh talking-to...and slipped in it. "Oh sh..."

"Yep," the doc said, chuckling, "that's what it looks like to me. How do you suppose it got there?"

"You're a doctor. Do you really need me to answer that?" I grabbed his outstretched hand and he pulled me up.

"Well, no...except that's animal scat. A very small animal, probably a small primate of some kind. And look at the door there." He pointed to the metal shoe guard. "What are those."

I leaned in for a closer look. "I'll be damned," I said. "Claw marks. Boy, I tell you doc, this case keeps getting weirder by the minute. Just before Ms. Matthews came at me she said something about really big claws attacking her."

"There's no evidence of that. But as I was putting on her restraints just now she did hiss at me. I hate it when they hiss."

"Who doesn't? Good thing you got those restraints on. She hisses before she strikes. Did she tell you she'd eat your spleen if you didn't answer a stock market question correctly?"

"Pancreas, actually. She's been doing that since she got here. In fact, she just demanded to know what I could possibly do to limit my losses in a stock to 20%, without having to watch it constantly?

1) Place a stop order at 20% below what I paid for it, figuring in the commissions.
2) Ask my broker to sell if it reaches 20% below what I paid for it, figuring in the commissions.
3) Sell the stock when I see it going down, and not worry about the commissions.
4) Avoid buying in the first place if I'm worried about losing money.

Income Statement information provided by Joe Louderback.

The answer is 1) place a stop order at 20% below what I paid for it, figuring in the commissions.

Stop orders are orders used to sell (or buy) when a specific movement occurs. It's not a guarantee of price, but it is a guarantee of execution. Let's say, for instance, that you want to sell. You put in a stop order at a given price. If the stock meets or passes through that price, the order is activated, and it is then executed when your order's turn comes up. It may be lower than the price at which the specialist put in the stop, but he will definitely get you out of the stock.

Many people use mental stops to see to it that they don't take too big a loss, but those require a that a watch be maintained on the stock. When an actual stop order is placed, you've put the watch in the hands of the specialist. He takes over the job of bird-dogging your stock, and you can move on to other things. The biggest downfall is when the stop price has been triggered, which means you will execute, but your place in line with the other stop orders in the specialist's book is pretty far down , and you could fill several points below (or above) the stop price that triggered the execution (when the stop order became a market order).

Again, Fools like to invest for the long term, and whether or not a given stock drops 20% is less important than the overall picture: is the stock a great one, worth holding for the long term? If so, then placing a stop order is not a good idea. Rather, a Fool sells when he or she determines that the price and the time is right, that the company is no longer the prospect that it once was, and that there are better investments to be made elsewhere.

I got a specimen jar from the doc, collected the evidence, and left the hospital with a promise to check in on Rachel later. I called Motli on the car phone and told her to get her tail to the office early in the morning. She told me she was busy and might be late. I told her she was fired, but she just laughed. The poor thing was still under the delusion that I somehow worked for her.

I lit a Lucky and took a long, heavy drag. I couldn't believe what I was about to go do.

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