"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."
"Winnie!"
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?"
I shook my head.
"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?"
"Hanged if I know," I said, "but they can't keep me there a day longer than you or I want. It isn't as though I was being committed to an asylum. It's just that there's a bad crack in my memory. They'll try to find out what's wrong and patch it up. Perhaps I won't have to stay after all."
"Do they let wives come and visit their husbands?" she asked dreamily. "I mean—"
"I've never heard that the medical profession encouraged that kind of therapy," I told her.
"Speaking of insanity," I continued, "Ponto, you will be glad to know, is back to normal."