After a time there came a dull click and a sleepy answer.
"Hello?" Elliot Macklin said.
Mitchell smiled to himself. He was in luck; Macklin had answered the phone instead of his wife.
"Can you speak freely, doctor?" Mitchell asked.
"Of course," the mathematician said. "I can talk fine."
"I mean, are you alone?"
"Oh, you want to know if my wife is around. No, she's asleep. That Army doctor, Colonel Sidney, he gave her a sedative. I wouldn't let him give me anything, though."
"Good boy," the biologist said. "Listen, doctor—Elliot—El, old son. I'm not against you like all the others. I don't want to make you go back to all that worrying and thinking and headaches. You believe me, don't you?"
There was a slight hesitation.
"Sure," Macklin said, "if you say so. Why shouldn't I believe you?"