"There's no furniture in the house," Irma told Lennox. A moment later she added: "It's all being custom built." "To hell with the furniture," Lennox said. "We don't want formal pictures. We want behind the scenes shots. What makes a talent great. Mig in his workshop with the dummy. How he builds Diggy.... How he paints him.... The tricks he invented.... All that sensational stuff you showed me, Mig." "Great! Sensational!" Mason leaped up, delighted. He was prouder of his mechanical ability than anything else. He led the way into another enormous room, carpeted from wall to wall, containing a long carpenter's bench cluttered with tools. Various portions of Diggy Dixon were scattered on the bench; heads, legs, arms, bodies, eyes. An open closet was hung with the dummy's wardrobe. Mason's three gag writers were seated on camp chairs in a tight circle bitching their competitors. Lennox greeted them perfunctorily. He had long ago given up all attempts to communicate with them. Gag writers are alien creatures and even a casual "Hello" can lead to complications. Their entire lives boil down to a single-minded search for jokes and it's impossible to conduct a coherent conversation with them. In thirty-nine weeks Lennox had never been introduced to the gagmen by Mason, and although he finally discovered their names, he still identified them as the Sourball, the Post-Nasal Drip and the Monk. Incidentally, it was the Sourball who later turned spy. "Got a sweetheart of a gag, Mig baby," the Monk beamed. "It stinks," Sourball snapped. "Try it on him, just for size." The Drip began snuffling in anticipation: "Hnkhhh...." "It's a sweetheart, baby. Diggy says to you: 'How's your wife, Mig?'" "I'll have you know my wife's an angel," Sourball snapped. "You're lucky! Hnkhhh.... My wife's still living." Mason looked at them nervously. The truth was, he didn't know a good gag from a bad one, and was always apprehensive. "I'm afraid of it, fellas," he said. "Diggy's a wholesome American boy. He wouldn't make fun of marriage." He dragged the photographer to the bench. There he demonstrated the inner workings of his genius ... the dummy's weighted eyes, the carefully fitted mouth and jaw, the regular body with right-hand controls for the head, and an extra body with left-hand controls; for dummies, like baseball gloves, must be fitted to the hand. Mason would have been in great difficulties last September, he explained, when he had rheumatism in his working hand, if he hadn't had a left-hand dummy to switch to. "Not rheumatism. Neuritis." Sourball said. "Wait a minute. Room. Attic. Hnkhhh.... Diggy's a poet working in an attic. Mig's the landlord. He asks Diggy where he could work better, in a room or attic, and Diggy says: 'That's why I'm bent over my desk. Rheumatics.'" "Switch it to neuritis," Sourball snapped. "Diggy's an editor. Mig's the poet. Mig's sore because Diggy says his poem is old fashioned."