She was clutching her napkin up near her face, giving him the impression that she was getting ready to bolt through the back door of the restaurant. Her blushes had departed with such thoroughness as to leave her skin absolutely white.

  “The fact that you’re not getting paid, Miss Gresham, is not really—” Before Fabian could complete the remark he was interrupted by the waiter with the entree. By the time the man had gone, he was annoyed to observe that Wednesday had used the respite to recover some of her poise. While she was still pale, she had a spot of red in each cheek, and she was leaning back in her chair now instead of using the edge of it.

  “The fact that you’re not getting paid is of no consequence,” he continued resolutely. “It’s merely logical. After all, you have the customary two weeks of vacation with pay every year. Which brings me to the second point I wanted to discuss with you. You have every year made two unusual requests. First, you’ve asked for an additional week’s leave of absence without pay, making three weeks in all. And then you’ve asked—”

  “To take it in the early Spring,” she finished for him, her voice entirely under control. “Is there anything wrong with that, Mr. Balik? That way I won’t have any conflict with the other girls and the firm will have the satisfaction of knowing that a secretary will be in the office all through the summer.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with such an arrangement per se. By that I mean,” he said, translating carefully, “that there is nothing wrong with the arrangement if it could stand in complete isolation by itself. But it makes for loose ends, for organizational confusion. And loose ends, Miss Gresham, loose ends and organizational confusion have no place in a well-regulated office.”

  He was pleased to note that she was looking uncomfortable again.

  “Does that mean—that I might be laid off?”

  “It could happen,” Fabian agreed, neglecting to add that it was, however, very unlikely to happen in the case of a secretary who was as generally efficient on the one hand, and as innocuous on the other, as Wednesday Gresham. With his knife he carefully freed a fork-sized portion of roast beef from its accompanying strip of orange fat before going on.

  “Look at it this way,” he said. “How would it be if every girl in the office asked for an additional week’s leave of absence every year—even if it was without pay, as it would naturally have to be? How would it be if, every few years, they wanted an additional month’s leave of absence on top of that? What kind of office would we have, Miss Gresham? Not a well-regulated one, certainly.”

  As he masticated the roast beef with the requisite thoroughness, he beamed at the thoughtful concern on her face and was mentally grateful that he hadn’t had to present a similar line of argument to anyone as sharp as—well, Arlette Stein. He knew what that largeboned and thirtyish bookkeeper would have immediately replied: “But every girl in the office doesn’t ask for it, Mr. Balik.” A heavy sneer at such sophistry would mean little to Stein.

  Wednesday, he appreciated, was not the person to go in for such counter-attacks. She was pursing her lips distressedly and trying to think of a polite, good-employee way out. There was only one, and he was sure she would have to come to it in a moment.

  She did.

  “Would it help any,” she began, and stopped. She took a deep breath. “Would it help any, if I told you the reasons for the—for the leaves-of-absence?”

  “It would,” he said heartily. “It would indeed, Miss Gresham. That way I, as office manager, can operate from facts instead of mysteries. I can listen to your reasons, weigh them for validity and measure their importance—and your usefulness as a secretary—against the disorganization your absences create in the day-to-day operation of Slaughter, Stark and Slingsby.”

  “M-m-m.” She looked troubled, uncertain. “I’d like to think a bit, if you don’t mind.”

  Fabian waved a cauliflower-filled fork magnanimously. “Take all the time in the world! Think it out carefully. Don’t tell me anything you aren’t perfectly assured about in your own mind. Of course anything you do tell me will, I can promise you, remain completely confidential. I will treat it as official knowledge, Miss Gresham—not personal. And while you’re thinking, you might start eating your raw cabbage. Before it gets cold,” he added with a rich, executive-type chuckle.

  She looked at him with the barest trace of a smile and began working at her plate in an absent-minded, a not-particularly-hungry fashion.

  “You see,” she began abruptly, as if she’d found a good point of departure, “some things happen to me that don’t happen to other people.”

  “That, I would say, is fairly obvious.”

  “They’re not really bad things. I mean they’re not what the newspapers would call bad. And they’re not dangerous things, exactly. They’re—they’re things that happen to my body.”

  Fabian finished his plate, sat back and crossed his arms. “Could you be just a little more specific?” he urged. “Unless—” He was suddenly struck by a horrifying thought. “Unless they’re what what is known as—er—female difficulties. In that case, of course—”

  This time she didn’t even blush. “Oh, no—not at all. At least, there’s very little of that. It’s—other things. Like my appendix. Every year I have to have my appendix out.”

  “Your appendix?” He turned that over in his mind. “Every year? But I don’t understand. A human being only has one appendix. And once it’s removed, it doesn’t grow back.”

  “Mine does,” she told him. “On the tenth of April, every single year, I get appendicitis and have to have an operation. That’s why I take my vacation then. And my teeth. Every five years, I lose all my teeth. I start losing them about this time, and I have dental plates that were made when I was a little girl. I use them until my teeth grow back—until about the middle of October when the last of them goes, and the new ones start coming up. I can’t use dental plates while they’re growing, so naturally I look kind of funny for a while. That’s why I ask for a leave of absence. In the middle of November, the new teeth are almost full-grown, and I can come back to work.”

  She took a deep breath and timidly lifted her eyes to his face. She had evidently completed all she had to say. Or wished to say.

  All through dessert, he thought about it. He was positive she was telling the truth. A girl like Wednesday Gresham didn’t lie. Not to such a fantastic extent, at any rate—and not to her boss.

  “Well,” he said at last. “It’s certainly very unusual.”

  “Yes,” she agreed. “Very unusual.”

  “Do you have anything else the matter with you? I mean, are there any other peculiarities—Oh, darn! Is there anything else?”

  Wednesday considered. “There are. But, if you don’t mind, Mr. Balik, I’d rather not talk about them.”

  Fabian decided not to take that. “Now see here, Miss Gresham,” he said firmly. “Let us not play games.

  You didn’t have to tell me anything. But you decided for yourself—for your own good reasons—to do so. Now I must insist on the whole story, and nothing but the whole story. What other physical difficulties do you have?”

  It worked. She cringed a bit in her chair, but almost instantly she straightened up again and began: “I’m sorry, Mr. Balik. I wouldn’t dream of—of playing games with you. There are lots of other things, but none of them interfere with my work, really. For instance, I have some tiny hairs growing on my fingernails. See?”

  Fabian glanced at her hand. There were a few almost microscopic tendrils on each glittering hard surface of fingernail, but he had to strain his eyes to see them. “What else?” he inquired. “Well, my tongue. I have a few hairs on the underside of my tongue. They don’t bother me, though. They don’t bother me in any way. And there’s my—my—”

  “Yes?” he prompted. Who could believe that colorless little Wednesday Gresham . . .

  “My navel. I don’t have any navel.”

  “You don’t have any—But that’s impossible!” he exploded. He felt his glasses sliding down his nose. “Everyone has a navel! Everyone alive—everyone who’s ever been born.”

  Wednesday nodded, her eyes unnaturally bright and large. “I know—” she began, and suddenly, unexpectedly, broke into tears. She brought her hands up to her face and sobbed through them, great, pounding, wracking sobs that pulled her shoulders up and down, up and down.

  Fabian’s consternation made him completely helpless. He’d never in his life, been in a crowded restaurant with a crying girl before.

  “Now, Miss Gresham—Wednesday,” he managed to get out, and he was annoyed to hear a high, skittery note in his own voice. “There’s no call for this. It only makes you feel worse. Crying, I mean. Uh—Wednesday?”

  “Maybe,” she gasped again, between sobs, “m-maybe that’s the answer.”

  “What’s the answer?” Fabian asked loudly, desperately hoping to distract her with some kind of conversation.

  “About—about being born. What if I wasn’t b-born? What if I was m-m-made!”

  And then, as if she’d merely been warming up before, she really went into hysterics. Fabian Balik at last realized what he had to do. He paid the check, put his arms around her waist and half-carried her out of the restaurant.

  It worked. She became quieter the moment they were in the open air. She leaned against a building, no longer crying, and shook her shoulders in a steadily-diminishing crescendo. Finally, she quieted down completely, and turned groggily to him, her face looking as if it had been rubbed determinedly in an artist’s palette.

  “I’m s-sorry,” she said. “I’m t-terribly s-sorry. I haven’t done that for years. But you see, Mr. Balik—I haven’t talked about myself for years.”

  “There’s a nice bar at the corner,” he pointed out, tremendously relieved. He had feared she had made up her mind to drive him to some drastic act of desperation by crying all day! “Let’s pop in, and I’ll have a drink. You can use the lady’s room to fix yourself up.”

  He took her arm and steered her into the place. Then he climbed onto a bar stool and had himself a double brandy.

  What an experience! And what a remarkably strange girl!

  Of course, he shouldn’t have pressed her quite so hard on a subject about which she was evidently so sensitive. Was that his fault, though—that she was so sensitive?

  Fabian considered the matter carefully, judicially, and decided that he was blaming himself needlessly. No, it definitely wasn’t his fault.

  But what a story! The foundling statement, the appendix statement, the teeth, the hair on the fingernails and tongue . . . And that last unbelievable assertion about the navel!

  He’d have to think it out—maybe get some other opinions. But one thing he was sure of—

  Wednesday Gresham hadn’t been lying in any particular. Wednesday Gresham was just not the sort of a girl who made up tall stories about herself.

  When she rejoined him, he urged her to have a drink. “It will help you get a grip on yourself.” She demurred, protesting that she didn’t drink very much. But he insisted, and finally she gave in. “Just a liqueur—anything. You order it, Mr. Balik.”

  Fabian was secretly very pleased at her docility. No reprimanding, no back-biting, such as most other girls indulged in. Although what in the world could she have reprimanded him for, come to think of it.

  “You still look a little frayed,” he told her. “When we get back, don’t bother going to your desk. Go right in to Mr. Osborne and finish taking dictation. There’s no point in giving the other girls something to talk about. I’ll sign in for you.”

  She inclined her head submissively and continued to sip from the tiny glass.

  “What was that last comment you made in the restaurant,” he asked. “I’m sure you won’t mind discussing it, now. I mean—about not being born, but being made? That was an odd thing to say.” Wednesday sighed. “It isn’t my own idea. It’s Dr. Lorington’s. Years ago, when he was examining me, he said that I looked as if I’d been made—by an amateur. By someone who didn’t have all the blueprints, or didn’t understand them, or wasn’t concentrating hard enough.”

  “I see.” He stared at her, absolutely intrigued. She looked normal enough. Better than normal, in fact. And yet—

  LATER THAT afternoon, he telephoned Jim Rudd and made an appointment for right after work. Jim Rudd had been his roommate in college and was now a doctor. Whatever his shortcomings, a practicing physician should be able to give him some advice that would be at least professional, and carry the weight of authority.

  But Jim Rudd wasn’t able to help him very much. He listened patiently to Fabian’s story and at the end of it leaned back in his chair and pursed his lips at the diploma hanging neatly framed on the wall facing him.

  “You sure do go in for the unusual, Fabe. For a superficially well-adjusted, well-organized guy with a real talent for the mundane things of life, you pick the damndest women I ever heard of. But that’s your business. Maybe it’s your way of adding a necessary pinch of the exotic to the grim daily round. Or maybe you’re making up for the drabness of your father’s grocery store.”

  “This girl isn’t a weirdie,” Fabian insisted angrily. “She’s a very simple little secretary, prettier than most—but that’s about all.”

  “Have it your own way. To me, she’s a real weirdie. To me, there’s not a hell of a lot of difference—from your description—between her and that crazy White Russian dame you were running around with back in our junior year. You know the one I mean—what was her name?”

  “Sandra? Oh, Jim, what’s the matter with you? Sandra was a bollixed-up box of dynamite who was always blowing up in my face. This kid turns pale and dies if I so much as raise my voice. Besides, I had a real puppy-love crush on Sandra. Miss Gresham is somebody I just met, and I don’t feel anything for her, one way or the other.”

  The young doctor grinned. “So you come up to my office and have a consultation about her! Well, it’s your funeral. What do you want to know?”

  “What causes all these—these physical peculiarities?”

  Dr. Rudd got up and sat on the edge of his desk. “First,” he Said, “whether you want to recognize it or not, she’s a highly disturbed person. The hysterics in the restaurant point to it, and the fantastic nonsense she told you about her body does too. So right there, you have something. If only one percent of what she told you is true—and even that I would say is pretty high—it makes sense in terms of psychosomatic imbalance. Medicine doesn’t yet know quite how it works, but one thing seems certain.

  Anyone badly mixed up mentally is going to be at least a little mixed up physically, too.”

  Fabian thought about that for a while. “Jim, you don’t know what it means to those little secretaries in the pool to tell lies to the office manager! A fib or two, about why they were absent the day before, yes. But not stories such as she told—not to me.”

  Rudd shrugged. “I don’t know what you look like to them. I don’t work for you, Fabe. But none of what you say would hold true for a psycho. And a psycho is what I have to consider her. Look, some of that stuff she told you is possible. Some of it has even occurred in medical literature. There have been well-authenticated cases of people, for example, who have grown several sets of teeth in their lifetime. These are biological sports, one-in-a-million individuals. Okay. But the rest of it? All the rest of it happening to one person? Please.”

  “I saw some of it,” Fabian protested. “I saw the hairs on her fingernails.”

  “You saw something on her fingernails. It could be any one of a dozen different possibilities. I’m sure of one thing. It wasn’t hair. Right there she gave herself away. Dammit, man, hair and nails are the same organs, essentially. One doesn’t grow on the other!”

  “And the navel? The missing navel?”

  Jim Rudd dropped to his feet and strode rapidly about the office. “I wish I knew why I’m wasting so much time with you,” he complained. “A human being without a navel is as possible as an insect with a body temperature of ninety-eight degrees. It just can’t be. It’s unheard of in medical literature.

  He seemed to get more and more upset as he considered it. He kept shaking his head negatively as he paced.

  “Suppose I brought her to your office,” said Fabian. “And suppose you examined her and found no navel. Now just consider that for a moment. What would you say then?”

  “I’d say plastic surgery,” the doctor said instantly. “Mind you, I’m positive she’d never submit to such an examination, but if she did, and there were no navel, plastic surgery would be the only answer.”

  “Why would anyone want to do plastic surgery on a navel?”

  “I don’t know. I haven’t the vaguest idea. Maybe she was in a serious accident. Maybe she had a disfiguring birthmark in that place. But there will be scars, let me tell you. She had to he born with a navel.”

  Fabian got up too. He was feeling very excited. “And if she hadn’t been born? The usual way, I mean?”

  “What other way is there? Hatching out of an egg?”

  “She could have been made,” Fabian suggested. “Just as she says—by an amateur. An amateur who, in addition to all his other errors, forgot to put in a navel.”

  Rudd went back to his desk. He picked up a prescription pad. “Let me give you the name of a good psychiatrist, Fabe. I’ve thought ever since that Sandra business that you’ve had some personal problems that might get out of hand one day. This man is one of the finest—”

  Fabian left. He went into a phone booth and called Wednesday and made a date with her for Saturday night . . .

  She was so obviously in a flutter when he picked her up that night—so much more of a flutter than a-date-with-the-boss would account for—that Fabian was puzzled. But he waited and gave her an ostentatious and expensive good time. Afterwards, after dinner and after the theater, when they were sitting in the corner of a small night club over their drinks, he asked her about it.

  “You don’t date much, do you, Wednesday?”