"Not interested. Whatever he's got to say to me is going to have a please in front and a thank you after."
Wearily, "Peter, must you always act like a child?"
"No, I don't," I blazed at him. "But I'm damn well going to. I'm free, white and a citizen, and I'm going to be treated like one, and not a side-show freak!"
"Now, now," he soothed. "Doctor Kellner is a very famous and a very busy man. He might not have realized-"
"Realize your hat! He's so used to living in the clouds he thinks the world is one big moron. Well, I may be one, but no one is going to tell me I am!"
"I see your point," and he stood up. "But you try to be a little more cooperative. I'll see Kellner now," and he started out.
"Cooperative?" I bellowed at his back. "What do you think I've been doing? What do you-"
* * * * *
He must have read the riot act. When they took me in to Kellner and his crew it was "please, Mr. Miller" and "thank you, Mr. Miller." The place didn't seem so cold and bare so long as I had my pants. I didn't see Whom and his van Dyke, but I hoped it was the tile floor and not me that gave him the concussion.
The rest of the tests, you can imagine, were almost anticlimactic. I stopped motors, blew tubes, turned lights off and on, rang bells and cooked the insulation on yards and yards of wire. My head they kept connected with taped terminals and every time I blew a fuse or a motor they would see the dials spin crazily. Then they would stand around clucking and chattering desperately. They took X-rays by the score, hoping to find something wrong with the shape of my head, and for all the results they got, might have been using a Brownie on a cue ball. Then they'd back off to the corner and sulk. One little bearded rascal, in particular, to this day is certain that Kellner was risking his life in getting within ten feet. He never turned his back on me that I recall; he sidled around, afraid I would set his watch to running backwards. You know, one of the funniest and yet one of the most pathetic things in the world is the spectacle of someone who has spent his life in mastering a subject, only to find that he has built a sled without runners. Long before we were finished I thought Kellner, for one, was going to eat his tie, stripes and all. Running around in ever-widening circles they were, like coon dogs after a scent. They didn't get a smell. The medico who ran the electro-cardiograph refused to make sense, after the fifth trials, out of the wiggly marks on his graphs.