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“You needn’t be in such a hurry,” said I with illogical resentment. “It isn’t going to be to-morrow or next week.”

“Isn’t it?” Something in his tone made me look at him sharply. “Six months or three months or to-morrow,” he added, more lightly; “what does it matter as long as it’s sure! You know, what I appreciate is that you gave me the truth straight.”

“It’s a luxury few of my patients get. Their constitutions won’t stand it.”

“It’s a compliment to my nerve. Strangely enough I don’t feel nervous about it.”

“I do. Damnably! About something, anyway. There’s something wrong with this room, Ned. What is it?”

“Don’t you know?” he laughed. “It’s the sepulchral silence of Old Grandfather Clock, over there. You’re looking right at him and wondering subconsciously why he doesn’t make a noise like Time.”

“That’s easily remedied.” Consulting my watch I set and wound the ancient timepiece. Its comfortable iteration made the place at once more livable. Immediately it struck the hour.

“Ten o’clock,” I said, and parted the draperies at the lower window to look out again. “Ten o’clock of a still, cloudy night and–and the devil is on a prowl in his garden.”

“Meaning my highly respected neighbor and ornament to the local bar, the Honorable Ely Crouch?”

“Exactly. Preceded by a familiar spirit in animal form.”

“Oh, that’s his pet ferret and boon companion.”

“Not his only companion. There’s some one with him,” I said. “A woman.”

“I don’t admire her taste in romance,” said Ned.

“Nor her discretion. You know what they say: ‘A dollar or a woman never safe alone with Ely Crouch.'”

“My dollars certainly weren’t,” observed Ned.

“How did he ever defend your suit for an accounting?” I asked.

“Heedlessness on my side, a crooked judge on his. Stop spying on my neighbor’s flirtations and look here.”

I turned and got a shock. The handbag lay open on the desk, surrounded by a respectable-sized fortune in bank-notes.

“Pretty much all that the Honorable Ely has left me,” he added.

“Is it enough to go on with, Ned?” I asked.

He smiled at me. “Plenty for my time. You forget.”

For the moment I had forgotten. “But what on earth are you going to do with all that ready cash?”

“Carry out a brilliant idea. I conceived it after you had handed down your verdict. Went around to the bank and quietly drew out the lot. I’ve planned a wild and original orgy. A riot of dissipation in giving. Think of the fun one can have with that much tangible money. Already to-day I’ve struck one man dumb and reduced another to mental decay, by the simple medium of a thousand-dollar bill. Miracles! Declare a vacation, Chris, and come with me on my secret and jubilant bat, and we’ll work wonders.”

“And after?” I asked.

“Oh, after! Well, there’ll be no further reason for the ‘permanent possibility of sensation’ on my part. That’s your precious science’s best definition of life, I believe. It doesn’t appeal to one as alluring when the sensation promises to become–well, increasingly unpleasant.”

There was no mistaking his meaning. “I can’t have that, my son,” I protested.

“No? That’s a purely professional prejudice of yours. Look at it from my point of view. Am I to wait to be strangled by invisible hands, rather than make an easy and graceful exit? Suicide! The word has no meaning for a man in my condition. If you’ll tell me there’s a chance, one mere, remote human chance–” He paused, turning to me with what was almost appeal in his glance. How I longed to lie to him! But Ned Worth was the kind that you can’t lie to. I looked at him standing there so strong and fine, with all the mirthful zest of living in his veins, sentenced beyond hope, and I thought of those terrible lines of another man under doom:

“I never saw a man who looked
So wistfully at the day.”

We medical men learn to throw a protective film over our feelings, like the veil over the eagle’s eye. We have to. But I give you my word, I could not trust my voice to answer him.