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between any hospital that would concede that I wasn't dead, and the morgue. But if I had been more on the ball, at the moment, couldn't I have gotten myself into the hands of some doctor of my choice?"

  "Yes, of course you could have.  But the situation in medical

practice has been shifting rapidly during the last years and even though you would have been dealing with an individual doctor who would have assumed the responsibility of your care, still that doctor would not have been in a position to exercise the leadership which you needed. He would have been present and probably active and concerned, but he would have been hampered in many ways which you wouldn't have realized. Inspector, let me interrupt for a minute. Is that another ship coming up the channel? Can you see the masts just over that roof over there?"

  "Probably the Agamemnon.  She has been trying to finish

loading but they haven't had enough crews. That heavy cargo behind the sheds was for her. She was scheduled to leave this afternoon but they were trying to get hold of a crane before the strike is called. Yes, that's the Agamemnon. May I give you a little more of the Retsina?"

  "Thank you.  How about your own glass?"
  "Yes, I'll join you.  But I want to go back to your own story.  As you

may have gathered, Doctor, I like people. Not many of them, because nobody could like many of them. But still, I like people and I like to understand them. I suppose I started wanting to understand them when I was old enough to realize that if I didn't, they would fool me. It was a question of which ones to believe and of those few, how much to believe; so I began to study them. What they were hiding and from whom, as we were saying. But all the time I liked them enough to keep looking and studying. I didn't want to be their dupe but I went on liking people. Well now, Doctor, I don't think you're fooling me and I believe I have an idea as to what you have been experiencing, but I'd be honored