“Yes,” admitted the boy.
“How did you know?”
The boy turned away.
“I read it somewhere,” said Tim.
The cat jumped back into the box and began to nurse her babies. Welles felt as if he could endure no more. Without a glance at anything else in the room—and everything else was hidden under tarpaulins and newspapers—he went to the door.
“Thanks for showing me, Tim,” he said. “And when you have any to sell, remember me. I’ll wait. I want one like that.”
The boy followed him out and locked the door carefully.
“But Tim,” said the psychiatrist, “that’s not what you were afraid I’d find out. I wouldn’t need a drug to get you to tell me this, would I?”
Tim replied carefully, “I didn’t want to tell this until I was ready. Grandmother really ought to know first. But you made me tell you.”
“Tim,” said Peter Welles earnestly, “I’ll see you again. Whatever you are afraid of, don’t be afraid of me. I often guess secrets. I’m on the way to guessing yours already. But nobody else need ever know.”