"Scratch a cop and find a four-flusher," I observed incautiously. "You're still looking for Booth in Ford's theatre and are figuring ways to guard Garfield in the Union Station. For all you know, Roosevelt may have been killed, but if he was, you know I had nothing to do with it. The record shows I'm one of the few people who tried to do anything about it. And you don't dare touch the man who told me." "Who was that?" Flynn demanded sullenly. "Axel Roscommon," I said, "another Irishman, so you don't dare lay a finger on him." "Roscommon!" Flynn snorted. "A black Protestant from Ulster. He's no Irishman, but I can't touch him, as well you know. The bloody British in the State Department are protecting him." "So you take it out on me, eh?" I suggested. Flynn drew himself up. "See here, Mr. Tompkins," he said, "I've told you to get out of Washington and stay out of Washington. In a job like mine I have to follow my hunches and my hunch is that if you aren't out of here by noon tomorrow we'll send you over to St. Elizabeth's for observation. After all, we can't have people threatening the President." "When did I ever threaten the President?" "Sure and you did it just now," declared the Chief. "You used threatening and abusive language about the President of the United States, within the meaning of the Act, and the Secret Service is not going to stand for it." "In other words, Mr. Flynn," I observed, "You can't win against the Cops. Anything to keep their job. Okay, I know when I'm licked. I'll leave town and I'll even beat you to the booby-hatch. If this is sanity, I _want_ to be locked up." Chief Flynn hunched his shoulders and scowled at me. "Yes," I told him, "I'll check myself with the psychiatrists." "Mr. Tompkins," Flynn remarked quietly, "the more I see of you the more I feel that you ought to have immediate medical attention." He lifted his telephone and began dialing a number. "And won't that look swell on your record," I said, "when President Truman gives me a citation for the Order of Merit the same day that Chief Flynn locks me up as a threat to the President." "Oh!" Flynn laid down the receiver and looked at me with dawning respect. "Oh! is right," I replied, and left the room. Nobody tried to stop me as I walked out of the Treasury but I knew that I must take no more chances. From now on it was a race to the alienists, and the best hope for continued liberty lay with my getting there first. I hailed a taxicab. "Drive me to the Phipps Clinic, Johns Hopkins Hospital," I told the driver. "Jeeze, Chief! That's in Baltimore." "You are absolutely right," I told him, "and it's fifty bucks for you if you get me there inside the hour." I sank back on the cushions of the rear seat. I had come out of the Washington rat-race worse off than when I had entered it. Then it was merely a question of my liberty. After three days it had become a matter of my sanity. CHAPTER 22