Before Seven could answer, Gregory Diggs walked in and closed the door behind him. George didn’t even wait for Diggs to sit down. He advanced, demanding, “All right, where’s your twin? We know you have one.”

“Twin?” exclaimed Gregory, completely confused.

“The guy with the bad gums,” George said, meaningfully. “There’s two of you. You show me your good gums and tell me some crazy story about a healing. And I fall for it—or I almost did. We found the records of your twin,” he said, lying with a sense of true virtue.

Gregory Diggs stared at George with an honest outrage that even George could see was beyond manufacture; so that George, who was basically good-hearted, felt instantly guilty.

“I don’t have any goddamned twin,” Gregory Diggs said, in a sputtering completely disbelieving voice. “How could you come up with that? I mean, maybe I haven’t always played cricket with the world, but I swear I’ve been completely above board in all this. I tell you, the guy healed my gums. It’s true, I left a few details out, but they didn’t have anything to do with my gums,” Gregory said, guiltily. He looked at Seven.

In some alarm, Seven said, “Forget it. Dr. Brainbridge has had enough to put up with today. I’ll tell him tomorrow.”

“No. I want to get it over with,” Gregory Diggs insisted, sounding as stubborn as George had earlier. “I told you, I’m starting over. The world’s just different for me now.”

“Tell me what?” George asked, with a silly quizzical look as if not sure he wanted to know at all.

So Seven just threw up his hands, telling himself that he’d ad-lib some explanations along the way, and Gregory began, in a hesitant, somewhat defensive voice:

“This was before my gums got healed. I saw you in the morning, and you said nothing could be done for them. They hurt like hell, and I was mad. I figured like I used to, that nobody gave a damn. Anyhow that night I decided to skip town, only I didn’t have any money. So I looked up your address in the phone book and went over.” Diggs stopped, glanced almost imploringly at the wide-eyed George and continued, “Well, I figured on stealing some drugs and selling them on the street for cash. I figured you probably got them free anyhow. Well….” He broke off, looking twice as uneasy as he had before.

“You may as well tell it all,” said George. He kept shaking his head and staring inquiringly at Seven.