“Maybe,” she gasped again, between sobs, “m-maybe that’s the answer.”

“What’s the answer?” Fabian asked loudly, desperately hoping to distract her into some kind of conversation.

“About—about being born. Maybe—maybe I wasn’t born. M-maybe I was m-m-made!”

And then, as if she’d merely been warming up before this, she really went into hysterics. Fabian Balik at last realized what he had to do. He paid the check, put his arm around the girl’s waist and half-carried her out of the restaurant.

It worked. She got quieter the moment they hit the open air. She leaned against a building, not crying now, and shook her shoulders in a steadily diminishing crescendo. Finally, she ulped once, twice, and turned groggily to him, her face looking as if it had been rubbed determinedly in an artist’s turpentine rag.

“I’m s-sorry,” she said. “I’m t-terribly s-sorry. I haven’t done that for years. But—you see, Mr. Balik—I haven’t talked about myself for years.”

“There’s a nice bar at the corner,” he pointed out, tremendously relieved. She’d looked for a while as if she’d intended to keep on crying all day! “Let’s pop in, and I’ll have a drink. You can use the ladies’ room to fix yourself up.”

He took her arm and steered her into the place. Then he climbed onto a bar stool and had himself a double brandy.

What an experience! And what a strange, strange girl!

Of course, he shouldn’t have pushed her quite so hard on a subject about which she was evidently so sensitive. Was that his fault, though, that she was so sensitive?

Fabian considered the matter carefully, judicially, and found in his favor. No, it definitely wasn’t his fault.

But what a story! The foundling business, the appendix business, the teeth, the hair on the fingernails and tongue… And that last killer about the navel!

He’d have to think it out. And maybe he’d get some other opinions. But one thing he was sure of, as sure as of his own managerial capacities: Wednesday Gresham hadn’t been lying in any particular. Wednesday Gresham was just not the sort of a girl who made up tall stories about herself.