"I never felt better," I assured her. "No, Jimmy, that was because somebody in the Secret Service got the idea that I ought to be put in an asylum. It's a nasty little trick of theirs, I gather, to send a man to the booby-bin for life if they don't like him but have no evidence against him. So I thought I'd play it smart and beat them to the punch. That's why I went to Baltimore, to get a mental check-up at the Phipps Clinic."
"Did they--Are you--Are you all right?" she faltered. "I couldn't bear it if--"
I laughed and gave her a good hug. "I'm all right," I told her. "They didn't have time to examine me but gave me two bits of advice. First, I was to get Jerry Rutherford to handle my case. I guess you need political influence now to get yourself locked up. And then, I was told that I ought to have more licker and wimmin in my life. It seems I'm getting in a rut."
"Uh-huh! They recommended it for curing highly inhibited cases like mine. I'm repressed or something."
"It must be something," Germaine observed fifteen minutes later. "Oh, dear, I didn't even think whether the door was locked. I'm a sight. You don't act repressed to me."
She turned her face towards me, her eyes laughing.
"In any case, I'll have to see a doctor," I said, "and it might as well be Rutherford. He knows so much about me that I won't have to do a lot of explaining."
Germaine swung her feet to the floor and straightened her clothes. "Winnie," she repeated, "_must_ you go to a doctor? Can't we try the _other_ prescription--I mean, give it a _good_ try?"
"No can do. I've got to get my memory straightened out. You and I--well, _we're_ all right now. But there's my business and then there's the Secret Service. I _can't_ seem to remember a thing before the second of April and I did so much lying in Washington, trying to cover up, that I may get into real trouble. That's what Virginia said, that I'd lied myself into a worse mess than I'd lied myself out of."
My wife pouted. "Don't these treatments take a long time?" she asked. "I remember when they sent Cousin Frederick to the asylum after that time when he put tear-gas in the air-conditioners in the Stock Exchange, it was three years before they let him out. Of course he _was_ crazy, though we pretended it was only drink. That time he tried to tattoo the little Masters girl--But won't they keep you locked up and do things to you?"