“Dr. Winn looked at both my arms. They were black and blue now. He studied them thoughtfully.

“Dr. Winn then asked me to lean forward so he could see the back of my head. I did, and I felt his amazingly gentle fingers touching a huge bump there. His touch sent a tingling all through me.

“Again, Goblin shook his head No. Don’t tell him about us. He will hurt me.

“ ‘Do you believe me now?’ I asked. ‘That I didn’t do this to myself?’

“ ‘Oh, yes, I believe you completely,’ he said. ‘None of your injuries are self-inflicted. For a variety of reasons it’s quite impossible for them to have been self-inflicted. But we’ve got to get that CAT scan.’

“I was immensely relieved.

“The CAT scan was a relatively simple ordeal, which revealed that there was no bleeding inside of my head and that my brain was not swelling, and immediately after Dr. Mayfair confirmed these results I was wheeled to a fairly lavish suite consisting of a living room and two bedrooms. One bedroom was mine. Aunt Queen was setting up shop in the other one. Jasmine, who had gone home for her clothes, was already back but would soon have to leave again.

“I promised to leave the IV alone and to cooperate with everything if the restraints were removed, and Dr. Mayfair agreed to this readily.

“ ‘There are guards on the door, aren’t there?’ I asked.

“Aunt Queen confirmed that there were. A uniformed police officer was right down the hall. And Clem was in the parlor.

“I could see that Aunt Queen had been crying. But even more distressing to me was the fact that she still wore her feathered negligee. She hadn’t had time to change. I felt bitterly angry and at the same time frightened.

“ ‘You know, this is a strange situation, my Little Boy,’ she said as she came to sit by my bed. (Goblin was hovering in the corner.) ‘We have two possible explanations for what happened tonight and either one is monstrous.’

“ ‘Believe me, there’s only one explanation,’ I said, ‘and this man is a threat!’ I then confessed to her how I had burnt the stranger’s books and how this had provoked him. ‘He’s an eccentric, I can vouch for that by the cut of his handsome black clothes and his long hair, but he’s strong as an ox, and Goblin gave him a terrific scare. He didn’t know what was hitting him or where the glass was coming from.’

“I stopped. I realized I had told her all this in the car. I had told her over and over. Was she listening to me now because Dr. Winn had said my wounds weren’t self-inflicted?