With a muffled objurgation he fell upon the jumble and began to overhaul it. The object sought defied his fevered efforts to unearth it and with teeth set, he ransacked the studio, resentfully flinging a melee of hindrances right and left. The telephone rang. "Kenny," said Garry's patient voice, "what in Heaven's name are you doing? What hit the wall?" "I'm hunting the stick to that damned psaltery," snapped Kenny and banged the receiver into the hook, one hand as usual clenched frenziedly in his hair. Later, with the studio a record of earthquake, he found it under a model stand and wiping his forehead anchored it to the psaltery for good and all with a shoestring. Horribly depressed he thumped on the wall for Garry, who came at once, wondering wryly if Brian had come in and the need again was mediation. "You might as well know," began Kenny at once, "that Brian didn't go up to Reynolds for me this noon--" Garry stared. "It was a lie," flung out Kenny with a jerk, "a damnable, deliberate, indecent lie. Whitaker says he's gone for good." His look was wistful and indignant. "Garry, what's wrong?" he demanded. "What on earth _is_ it? Why couldn't things have gone on as they were, without God knows how many people picking _me_ for a target? As far as I can see I'm merely maintaining my usual average of imperfection and all the rest of the world has gone mad." "I suppose, Kenny," began Garry lamely, "you must be starting a new cycle. Jan could tell you. He talks a lot about the cycle of dates and the philosophy of vibrations--" "I know that I regard the truth as something sacred, to be handled with delicacy and discretion," began Kenny with bitter fluency. "I'm an unsuccessful parent with an over-supply of hair and teeth, afflicted with hairbrained, unquenchable youth. I'd be a perennial in the Land of the Young and could hobnob indefinitely with his Flighty Highness, the King of Youth. I'm forty-four years young and highly temperamentalized. I've made a mess of parenting Brian and I'm an abject failure." Garry looked at him. "Just what are you talking about?" he asked. "I know," pursued Kenny elaborately, "that it's unfortunate I haven't wrecked my own life when I'm an accidental success at wrecking Brian's. I'm full of cobwebs. I damn irrefutable things and I've forced Brian to a profession of sunsets to gratify my vanity. Can you personally, Garry, think of anything else?" "Sit down!" said Garry. "You're about as logical as a lunatic--" "Tell Whitaker, do," begged Kenny. "There's one he missed. Garry, what's back of all this turmoil? What's the real reason for Brian's brain-storm? I'm sick to death of Whitaker's wordy arabesque and abuse. I want facts." "Brian said it all last night," reminded Garry. "It's just another case of a last straw."