"Oh! is right," I replied, and left the room.
Nobody tried to stop me as I walked out of the Treasury but I knew that I must take no more chances. From now on it was a race to the alienists, and the best hope for continued liberty lay with my getting there first.
I hailed a taxicab. "Drive me to the Phipps Clinic, Johns Hopkins Hospital," I told the driver.
"Jeeze, Chief! That's in Baltimore."
"You are absolutely right," I told him, "and it's fifty bucks for you if you get me there inside the hour."
I sank back on the cushions of the rear seat. I had come out of the Washington rat-race worse off than when I had entered it. Then it was merely a question of my liberty. After three days it had become a matter of my sanity.
[CHAPTER 22]
The white-coated medical man—he said that he was associate psychiatrist at the Phipps Clinic—beckoned me to follow him into a side-room. He waved me to be seated and closed the door.
"You see, Mr. Tompkins," he told me, "everybody's crazy."