He walked rapidly home, whistling to himself from time to time. Perhaps he, Peter Welles, was the luckiest man in the world.
He had scarcely begun to talk to Timothy on the boy’s next appearance at the office, when the phone in the hall rang. On his return, when he opened the door he saw a book in Tim’s hands. The boy made a move as if to hide it, and thought better of it.
Welles took the book and looked at it.
“Want to know more about Rorschach, eh?” he asked.
“I saw it on the shelf. I—”
“Oh, that’s all right,” said Welles, who had purposely left the book near the chair Tim would occupy. “But what’s the matter with the library?”
“They’ve got some books about it, but they’re on the closed shelves. I couldn’t get them.” Tim spoke without thinking first, and then caught his breath.
But Welles replied calmly: “I’ll get it out for you. I’ll have it next time you come. Take this one along today when you go. Tim, I mean it—you can trust me.”
“I can’t tell you anything,” said the boy. “You’ve found out some things. I wish… oh, I don’t know what I wish! But I’d rather be let alone. I don’t need help. Maybe I never will. If I do, can’t I come to you then?”
Welles pulled out his chair and sat down slowly.
“Perhaps that would be the best way, Tim. But why wait for the ax to fall? I might be able to help you ward it off—what you’re afraid of. You can kid people along about the cats; tell them you were fooling around to see what would happen. But you can’t fool all of the people all of the time, they tell me. Maybe with me to help, you could. Or with me to back you up, the blowup would be easier. Easier on your grandparents, too.”
“I haven’t done anything wrong!”
“I’m beginning to be sure of that. But things you try to keep hidden may come to light. The kitten—you could hide it, but you don’t want to. You’ve got to risk something to show it.”
“I’ll tell them I read it somewhere.”
“That wasn’t true, then. I thought not. You figured it out.”
There was silence.
Then Timothy Paul said: “Yes, I figured it out. But that’s my secret.”
“It’s safe with me.”
But the boy did not trust him yet. Welles soon learned that he had been tested. Tim took the book home, and returned it, took the library books which Welles got for him, and in due course returned them also. But he talked little and was still wary. Welles could talk all he liked, but he got little or nothing out of Tim. Tim had told all he was going to tell. He would talk about nothing except what any boy would talk about.
After two months of this, during which Welles saw Tim officially once a week and unofficially several times—showing up at the school playground to watch games, or meeting Tim on the paper route and treating him to a soda after it was finished—Welles had learned very little more. He tried again. He had probed no more during the two months, respected the boy’s silence, trying to give him time to get to know and trust him.
But one day he asked: “What are you going to do when you grow up, Tim? Breed cats?”
Tim laughed a denial.
“I don’t know what, yet. Sometimes I think one thing, sometimes another.”
This was a typical boy answer. Welles disregarded it.
“What would you like to do best of all?” he asked.
Tim leaned forward eagerly. “What you do!” he cried.
“You’ve been reading up on it, I suppose,” said Welles, as casually as he could. “Then you know, perhaps, that before anyone can do what I do, he must go through it himself, like a patient. He must also study medicine and be a full-fledged doctor, of course. You can’t do that yet. But you can have the works now, like a patient.”
“Why? For the experience?”
“Yes. And for the cure. You’ll have to face that fear and lick it. You’ll have to straighten out a lot of other things, or at least face them.”
“My fear will be gone when I’m grown up,” said Timothy. “I think it will. I hope it will.”
“Can you be sure?”
“No,” admitted the boy. “I don’t know exactly why I’m afraid. I just know I must hide things. Is that bad, too?”
“Dangerous, perhaps.”
Timothy thought a while in silence. Welles smoked three cigarettes and yearned to pace the floor, but dared not move.
“What would it be like?” asked Tim finally.
“You’d tell me about yourself. What you remember. Your childhood—the way your grandmother runs on when she talks about you.”
“She sent me out of the room. I’m not supposed to think I’m bright,” said Tim, with one of his rare grins.
“And you’re not supposed to know how well she reared you?”
“She did fine,” said Tim. “She taught me all the wisest things I ever knew.”
“Such as what?”
“Such as shutting up. Not telling all you know. Not showing off.”
“I see what you mean,” said Welles. “Have you heard the story of St. Thomas Aquinas?”
“No.”
“When he was a student in Paris, he never spoke out in class, and the others thought him stupid. One of them kindly offered to help him, and went over all the work very patiently to make him understand it. And then one day they came to a place where the other student got all mixed up and had to admit he didn’t understand. Then Thomas suggested a solution and it was the right one. He knew more than any of the others all the time; but they called him the Dumb Ox.”
Tim nodded gravely.
“And when he grew up?” asked the boy.
“He was the greatest thinker of all time,” said Welles. “A fourteenth-century super-brain. He did more original work than any other ten great men; and died young.”
After that, it was easier.
“How do I begin?” asked Timothy.