“Yes, I think so.” He was trying to fit it with the personalities as he knew them. He couldn’t make a decision, and not just because he did not know MacIver. Perhaps he knew some of MacIver’s traits, and enough of them to see how he would function in therapy or analysis. The truth was that he did not know the process itself; all his information had been gleaned from hearsay: what Karen had told him about child guidance, what she had picked up from Jerry Palmer, what Leland himself had heard from others—Norma, Anne had had a brother in group therapy—and what he had read in those popular books. He had to go along with Karen. She did know this better and she was not unsure. On the way over, he had been closing off the other alternatives about Wendell Roberts. His opinion of him had also settled. He would never be comfortable around Roberts because of what had happened tonight, but he could not help wondering about the range and depth of his mind. Roberts was an extremely bright and sensitive man, yet he was up to playing games—badminton: there was a file of photographs on this case—and he was capable of a shrewdness and calculation—up to the harder games, too—that Leland had encountered only once or twice before. Karen had been one of those encounters, but Leland did not think she was truly Roberts’ equal.

He said to her, “Listen, I’m calling from a pay telephone because I wanted to be certain of our privacy.” He told her how Norma had checked out of the hotel and taken the train. “When I got down here she said she wanted me to stay at her place. After the experience with her doctor, I’m a bit leery of extensions.”

“I thought she would pull something. The plane seemed like the right opportunity. I don’t like to talk like this, but you do have the doctor’s word, too. Be careful, Joe. You won’t be able to say you weren’t warned.”

“You’re trying to make it worse than it is. I know this is upsetting for you, but go easy. According to the doctor, she took the train because my mood was too good when I called her this morning. I didn’t seem interested in her. You know why my mood was good. I wish I was home instead of here.”

“Eventually, that may prove to be the trouble,” she said.

“You’re not talking to a college boy, Karen.”

“It was supposed to be a joke.”

“She knows where I stand. Relax. Forget it.”

“I think we should change the subject,” she said. “You said you’d been busy.”

He told her that he had sent MacIver’s business papers to Manitou and that Florence was at his apartment to take delivery.