Fabian thought about that for a while. “Jim, you don’t know what it means to those little secretaries in the pool to tell lies to the office manager! A fib or two about why they were absent the day before, yes, but not stories like this, not to me”

A shrug. “I don’t know what you look like to them: I don’t work for you, Fabe. But none of what you say would hold true for a psycho. And a psycho is what I have to consider her. Look, some of that stuff she told you is impossible, some of it has occurred in medical literature. There have been well-authenticated cases of people, for example, who have grown several sets of teeth in their lifetime. These are biological sports, one-in-a-million individuals. But the rest of it? And all the rest of it happening to one person? Please.”

“I saw some of it. I saw the hairs on her fingernails.”

“You saw something on her fingernails. It could be any one of a dozen different possibilities. I’m sure of one thing; it wasn’t hair. Right there she gave herself away as phony. Goddammit, man, hair and nails are the same organs essentially. One doesn’t grow on the other!”

“And the navel? The missing navel?”

Jim Rudd dropped to his feet and strode rapidly about the office. “I wish I knew why I’m wasting so much time with you,” he complained. “A human being without a navel, or any mammal without a navel, is as possible as an insect with a body temperature of ninety-eight degrees. It just can’t be. It does not exist.”

He seemed to get more and more upset as he considered it. He kept shaking his head negatively as he walked.

Fabian suggested: “Suppose I brought her to your office. And suppose you examined her and found no navel. Now just consider that for a moment. What would you say then?”

“I’d say plastic surgery,” the doctor said instantly. “Mind you, I’m positive she’d never submit to such an examination, but if she did, and there was no navel, plastic surgery would be the only answer.”