"Well," he replied slowly, "that's another story. I'm not a specialist along psychiatric lines. Up here I get mostly baby-cases, indigestion, some alcoholism and now and then, thank God, a real honest broken leg. My name on a certificate wouldn't mean much in sanity proceedings. I'd rather have you run over to Hartford and see Dr. Folsom at the Sanctuary. He has the stuff and the equipment to put you through the standard tests." "That's okay by me, Jerry," I agreed, "but I'd still like you to put me through a few paces so that your records will show that this is on the level. If some bright boy in Washington decides to throw me in the asylum for making nasty faces at the Big Brass, I want to have a clean medical record for use in a counter-suit for false arrest." Rutherford stood up and looked out the window. "I'm a hell of a poor choice for a man to look into your private life, after this business with Germaine and Virginia," he observed. "That's why I want to keep it all in the family," I told him. "Listen, Jerry, until she came out to Pook's Hill the other day I have no recollection of ever setting eyes on Virginia. Under the circumstances, she's as superfluous as a bridegroom's pajamas. I faked as well as I could but the plain fact is that I have no memory of her, of you, of Jimmie or anybody around here before April 2nd. Now that's not normal, to put it mildly." "You know, Winnie," the doctor remarked professionally, "I think that your quote loss of memory unquote is nothing but a defense mechanism. I know a bit about your affairs and they seem to have got so complicated--with three or four women on a string, business problems, liquor and so forth--that you simply decided subconsciously not to remember anything about them. Your mind's a blank as to everything you want to forget." I shook my head. "The trouble is, Jerry, that my mind's not blank at all. I remember a hell of a lot but it's all about another man." "How's that again?" So I told him the whole story, from beginning to end, skipping only the bits about the thorium bomb and Z-2 for reasons of security, and omitting the name of the carrier. He took notes and studied them for a while. Then he looked up at me and smiled. "This beats anything in Freud," he observed. "I still stick to my off-the-cuff diagnosis that you had something that gave you a shock--it needn't have been anything big, you know; just a straw that broke the camel's back--and then developed this loss of memory as a defense mechanism. And this transfer of personalities with Jacklin--metempsychosis is the fancy word for it--is not the usual type of schizophrenia, but it falls into a pattern of wish-fulfillment.