Crazy? I'll say! I was the only person alive who knew that it was true and nobody would ever believe me, if only for the reason that it would always be much simpler to lock me up. Quite obviously, Ponto knew that he was Winnie and resented my presence in his home. He had shown the jealousy and ill-temper natural to a man, instead of the friendliness of a dog. He had been humanly jealous of Germaine. Suddenly I chuckled. By George! this was rich. Winnie in turn undoubtedly believed that I was Ponto. The Jacklin angle was outside of his range. No wonder he was furious with me when he saw that his household pet--a Great Dane--masquerading in his human body, had usurped his place in the affections of his wife and in authority over his home. Only hunger, which brings all things to terms, had broken his rebellion against this monstrous confusion. It must be tough to find yourself reduced to dog-biscuits and runs on the lawn. I knew what I must do. Arthurjean had been right. The only way I could make myself secure was to have Ponto killed. Would this be murder? I wondered what Father Flanagan would make of it. Probably he would say, "Yes, it is murder if you believe that Winfred Tompkins is Ponto." Yet until Ponto was dead, there could be no security for me. At any moment, if the psychiatrists were right, the change might come, with a small shock, and Winnie Tompkins would resume lawful possession of his body, his home, his wife, his money, while I--Commander Frank Jacklin, U.S.N.R.--could count myself lucky to be allowed to sleep on a smelly old blanket on the floor in the corner and eat dog-biscuits and be offered as a thoroughbred sire. There was still time to stop that nonsense. The strictly practical thing to do was to go to the kennels first thing in the morning. Then I'd take Ponto away from Dalrymple and drive down to White Plains and find a vet to give him chloroform. Thus I would be safe from the possibility of having Winnie reoccupy his body and drive me into Ponto's or, worse still, into the stratosphere to join the mild chemical mist that was all that remained of the body of Frank Jacklin. All right, it was murder then. I would be murdering Winnie Tompkins, but I would be the only one who would know it--the Perfect Crime. I laughed to myself at the thought that now Harcourt would lose his last chance to learn what Winnie had done in that fatal week before Chalmis' thorium bomb had blown me and the Alaska into the Aurora Borealis.