correct—suppose no error truly exists?"

"There is that possibility; but if the paradox is true, I will have at least been forced to forget that I once believed an error existed. But I must check this math as a competent and unbiassed observer."

"That can be done."

"Good; now let's get going and let's have no more nonsense about my glands."

"This I can do; I will help you."

Maculay relaxed while the doctor produced his hypnoscope and set it up on the table. With Maculay's cooperation, he was in the hypnotic trance in a matter of seconds.

Doctor Hanson looked at the man. This was probably the first time that the entire man had relaxed, mind and body, in years. But Hanson did not see the point: Maculay may have run into a mathematical paradox, but it was not of honest mathematics. Figures do not lie, but liars can figure; it is more than possible that a brain will introduce an error in order that the facts of the case be unrecognized. Hanson nodded quietly. Man was mind and glands and body and appetite, bones, hide, and ulcers. If a sick mind can produce a sickness of the body, the reverse is true. Cliff's error was not in his mathematics; it was in his life.

Of all the things Maculay needed, more work along the same line with no relaxation was not among the list. What Maculay needed—or would eventually get in a sanatorium—was a long period of relaxation. Fun and games; a bit of competition; a hangover, and the sheer physical delight of wrapping an arm about the slender waist of a female and swaying to and fro to the rhythmic beat of tomtoms and the howl of a well beaten clarinet.

At seventy, Jay Hanson had learned the impatience of youth. Maculay had a lot of time to finish his equations. Scissor a year of Maculay's life and he could then finish this; let him go on as he was and he would burn himself out at a mere fifty.

He looked at Maculay seriously. "You have been working too hard," he said.

The reply came instantly, like the echo of an automaton.

Hanson nodded to himself. It was obvious; when the burning drive of that demanding brain was stilled, the subconscious recognized the fact that Maculay was working too hard.

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