She had tried to make things always stimulating and agreeable for him around the house. She had always encouraged young people to congregate, though it did seem that Artie wore out his friends rather rapidly. For this reason, perhaps, she had tolerated too long his unhealthy relationship with Judd Steiner.

Mementoes, snapshots were brought out, and Dr. Allwin studied them absorbedly: the white-clad tennis youth, the smiling boy in the class photograph, the collegiate Artie in a roadster. And then, further back, among the childhood pictures, one snapshot halted the alienist: Artie in a cowboy suit, holding a toy pistol, stalking his teddy bear.

Did she remember when it was taken?

Of course she remembered it! Artie was four, yes. A Sunday afternoon – Artie was so cute, so darling that day, and Mr. Straus himself had been unusually relaxed and had taken the pictures. Why? Was there something about the picture?

No, nothing unusual, the doctor said. But yet – in the expression…

And he so loved his teddy bear, the mother said.

But still, the doctor mused, a kid would be grinning, or making faces, or looking toward his parents. But here, the boy was so intent, lost in his masquerade, really living the hunt. He asked, This was shortly after the governess, Miss Newsome, came into the household? Why, yes, the mother said, her brows contracted. But why?

He himself didn’t know, he was only feeling his way. Was this a moment that became fixed, frozen, a boy for ever masquerading, for ever a hunter with a pistol? “It’s just that he seems so concentrated,” the doctor said. Could he take this picture with him? he asked. But of course! And he pocketed the snapshot.

In the Steiner house, too, there were mementoes. The elaborate Baby’s Book that the mother had filled with such exalted pride – the photographs of the tiny, alert infant with his curiously brilliant black eyes. And Aunt Bertha talking all the while of the marvels of the precocious child, and how his father and mother would do anything, anything for him.

The alienist nodded, and meanwhile thumbed through the Mark Twain School Annual, bound in elaborately embossed leather. “He was the highest in his class,” the aunt said, “and the youngest.” And Dr. Allwin halted at a page of verse, one stanza devoted to each member of the junior class. The very end of it had caught his eye:

Now there’s our Junior list

And surely there’s no finer.

But wait! we nearly missed

The mighty Judah Steiner!

Turning the page, Dr. Allwin came upon a photograph of Artie Straus – “Most Popular Twainite, and Youngest Student Ever to Enter the University of Chicago.”

From the brothers, there was little to be learned. Max said he had honestly tried to help the kid, but they just never had been interested in the same things. With the Straus men, brother James said maybe he had covered up too much for Artie, and Uncle Gerald said there was that incident four years ago – maybe the family should have paid more attention. James told of the incident. Going through his desk he had found a hundred-dollar Liberty Bond missing. “Artie got all excited and told some cock-and-bull story about seeing the chauffeur hanging around my room. But when Artie was out, I took a look in his desk and found the bond.” James had called him a lousy little thieving liar. And now James remembered how Artie had turned on him in bitter screaming anger, crying, “All right! So I swiped it! So what the hell is it to you!”

What the hell is it to you! It echoed now. Was that the kind of thing the doctor meant? “Maybe we should have done something about things like that, taken him to a doctor; maybe it was a sign.”

But Uncle Gerald said, “You should have beat the stuffings out of him.”

“Your father must have known something of his delinquencies?” the doctor asked of James.

“I guess he had an idea, but you see Dad was – well, off by himself. I’m afraid no one in the family was as close as we should have been to Artie.”

The doctor took a deep breath. Artie had apparently never learned to give anyone his confidence, he observed. Perhaps it would be best to prepare him for the study that was to be made. Since time was short, he should be made to understand that the doctors wished only to help him, but that they could do so only if he were entirely frank, and held nothing back. And as James and Uncle Gerald seemed after all to have most influence with him, perhaps they could suggest… They nodded, solemnly.

It was on their way to the jail that the disturbing thought came up. Should Artie really be advised to tell the doctors everything? The papers were still full of all those other crimes the police were trying to put on the boys. That awful taxi-driver thing. And the drowning and the shooting. All young men, all in the last year on the South Side. Who knew, with Artie? What couldn’t he have done, if he had done this thing! And if he now revealed, to his own doctors – James eyed Uncle Gerald, with the dreaded question.

“Well, how’s it look?” Artie said to them, coming jauntily into the visitor’s room.

Uncle Gerald suddenly noticed the torn sleeve on the prison coat Artie was wearing. “What happened to your clothes?”

“They got lousy,” Artie said cheerily. “So the screws gave me this.”

How did things look? Artie repeated. Any chances? And before they could answer, “Say, James-” Would James tell Dorothea Lengel to stand opposite his window at 10 A.M., he’d wave to her.

Now seriously, Uncle Gerald said, Artie was going to have to snap out of this silly attitude. He had to work with the alienists. Everything depended on the report of the alienists.

“Oh, a battle of experts!” Artie exclaimed. “I guess you can’t claim that I was temporarily insane, that’s out, but how about heredity, maybe we ought to say it’s in the family – how about Cousin Richard?”

“Don’t try to put on an act, Artie,” his brother advised. “Just co-operate with these doctors. Just tell them everything they want to know.”

“Everything?”

His brother met his eyes. “Even the things people never tell anybody, kid. Things you’d never tell – well, me.”

“Things I did? Everything?”

That peculiar look came into Artie’s eyes, conspiratorial, cunning, and yet cute.

“Artie,” his uncle said, “are there important things we don’t know?”

“Well, do you want to know?” Was he teasing? Kidding? Now he laughed. “You believe all that crap in the papers?”

“Well, let’s say this,” his uncle stipulated reflectively. “If there is anything you run into that you’re in doubt about, Artie, maybe you’d better ask James first whether you should tell it.”

A snort escaped from Artie. “Maybe it would be easier to tell the docs.”

James said, “This may be your life, kid.”

“The hell you care!” Artie snapped.

James gasped. Artie’s voice had suddenly sounded quavering, the cry of some six-year-old kid wanting something from his big brother. “We all care, kid. We want to help you.”

Artie had changed back. “How’s Mumsie bearing up?” he asked contritely.

“She’s a little better. The doctors said for her to stay in Charlevoix,” James said. Was there anything else Artie wanted?

Sure. They could send in a couple of broads, he said with his old grin.

With Judd, it was Max who explained about co-operation with the psychiatrists. As usual, Judd’s response was to show he knew more than the experts. “According to the legal definition, I’m sane.”

“You wouldn’t think it,” Max let slip, and the old hostility was there between them. “For Christ’s sake, if you’re not crazy, what made you do it?” Max cried. “You must have been all ginned up!”