stwatch in place of his spectacular chronograph.

By all Broadway standards, he knew, Doc was correct--he'd become strange
and eccentric, a character.

* * * * *

"It was Zelda's idea," Clocker explained somberly, sitting down and
shaking his head at the waiter who ambled over. "She wanted to make a
gentleman out of me."

"_Wanted to?_" Doc repeated, bewildered. "You two kids got married just
before they took my snakes away. Don't tell me you phhtt already!"

Clocker looked appealingly at the others. They became busy with drinks
and paper napkins.

Naturally, Doc Hawkins knew the background: That Clocker was a race
handicapper--publisher, if you could call it that, of a tiny tip
sheet--for Doc, in need of drinking money, had often consulted him
professionally. Also that Clocker had married Zelda, the noted 52nd
Street stripteuse, who had social aspirations. What remained to be told
had occurred during Doc's inevitably temporary cure.

"Isn't anybody going to tell me?" Doc demanded.

"It was right after you tried to take the warts off a fire hydrant and
they came and got you," said Clocker, "that Zelda started hearing
voices. It got real bad."

"How bad?"

"She's at Glendale Center in an upholstered room. I just came back from
visiting her."

Doc gulped his entire drink, a positive sign that he was upset, or
happy, or not feeling anything in particular. Now, however, he was
noticeably upset.

"Did the psychiatrists give you a diagnosis?" he asked.

"I got it memorized. Catatonia. Dementia praecox, what they used to
call, one of the brain vets told me, and he said it's hopeless."

"Rough," said Doc. "Very rough. The outlook is never good in such
cases."

"Maybe they can't help her," Clocker said harshly, "but I will."

"People are not horses," Doc reminded him.

"I've noticed that," said Handy Sam, the armless wonder at the flea
circus, drinking beer because he had an ingrown toenail and couldn't
hold a shot glass. Now that Clocker had told the grim story, he felt
free to talk, which he did enthusiastically. "Clocker's got a giant
brain, Doc. Who was it said Warlock'd turn into a dog in his third year?
Clocker, the only dopester in the racket. And that's just one--"

"Zelda was my best flesh act," interrupted Arnold Wilson Wyle, a
ten-percenter whom video had saved from alimony jail. "A solid boffola
in the bop basements. Nobody regrets her sad condition more than me,