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"You can't find the words?" Dr. Brown suggested. There was a tinge of anxiety in the healer's voice, and he shifted about, putting body English on whatever Eliot was about to do.

"I can't find the words," Eliot agreed.

"Well," said the Senator, "if you can't put it into words, you certainly can't use it at a sanity hearing."

Eliot nodded in appreciation of the truth of this. "Did—did I even begin to put it into words?"

"You simply announced," said the Senator, "that you had just been struck by an idea that would clear up this whole mess instantly, beautifully and fairly. And then you looked up in the tree."

"Um," said Eliot. He pretended to think, then shrugged. "Whatever it was, it's slipped my mind."

Senator Rosewater clapped his speckled old hands. "It isn't as though we're short of ideas as to how to beat this thing." He gave his hideous victory grin, patted McAllister on the knee. "Right?" He reached behind McAllister, patted the stranger on the back. "Right?" He was crazy about the stranger. "We've got the greatest idea man in the world on our side!" He laughed, he was so happy about all the ideas.

The Senator now extended his arms to Eliot. "But my boy here, just the way he looks and carries himself—there's our winning argument number one. So trim! So clean!" The old eyes glittered. "How much weight has he lost, Doctor?"

"Forty-three pounds."

"Back to fighting weight," the Senator rhapsodized. "Not a spare ounce on him. And what a tennis game! Merciless!" He bounced to his feet, did a ramshackle pantomime of a tennis serve. "Greatest game I ever saw in my life took place an hour ago, within these walls. You killed him, Eliot!"

"Um." Eliot looked around for a mirror or some reflecting surface. He had no idea what he looked like. There was no water in the pool of the fountain. But there was a little in the birdbath at the center of the pool, a bitter broth of soot and leaves.

"Didn't you say the man Eliot beat was a tennis pro?" the Senator asked Dr. Brown.

"Years ago."

"And Eliot murdered him! And the fact that the man is a mental patient wouldn't interfere with his game, would it?" He didn't wait for an answer. "And then when Eliot came bounding off the court, victorious, to shake our hands, I wanted to laugh and cry at the same time. 'And this is the man,' I said to myself, 'who has to prove tomorrow that he's not insane! Ha!' "

Eliot, drawing courage from the fact that the four men watching him were sure he was sane, now stood, as though to stretch. His real purpose was to bring himself nearer the birdbath. He took advantage of his reputation as an athlete, hopped into the dry pool, did a deep-knee bend, as though working off an excess of animal spirits. His body did the exercise effortlessly. He was made of spring steel.

The vigorous movements called Eliot's attention to something bulky in his hip pocket. He pulled it out, found that it was a rolled copy of The American Investigator. He unrolled it, half expecting to see Randy Herald begging to be planted with genius seeds. What he saw on the cover was his own picture instead. He was wearing a fire helmet. The picture was a blow-up from a Fourth of July group photograph of the Fire Department.

The headline said this:

SANEST MAN IN AMERICA? (SEE INSIDE)

Eliot looked inside, while the others engaged each other in optimistic palaver about the way the hearing would go next day. Eliot found another picture of himself in the center spread. It was a blurry one of him playing tennis on the nut house court.

On the facing page, the gallantly sore-headed little family of Fred Rosewater seemed to glare at him as he played. They looked like sharecroppers. Fred had lost a lot of weight, too. There was a picture of Norman Mushari, their lawyer. Mushari, now in business for himself, had acquired a fancy vest and massive gold watch chain. He was quoted as follows:

"My clients want nothing but their natural and legal birthrights for themselves and their descendents.