thirty sharp. How he must be cursing me! You
know how peevish he is."

Miss Judson nodded, with a perfect expression of contrition and humility,
as if she knew all about it, although, in reality, she knew only all
about her employer and had never heard till that moment of his engagement
at eleven-thirty.

"Doctor Hadley's just across the hall," Doctor Emory explained to
Daughtry. "It won't take me five minutes. He and I have a disagreement.
He has diagnosed the case as chronic appendicitis and wants to operate. I
have diagnosed it as pyorrhea which has infected the stomach from the
mouth, and have suggested emetine treatment of the mouth as a cure for
the stomach disorder. Of course, you don't understand, but the point is
that I've persuaded Doctor Hadley to bring in Doctor Granville, who is a
dentist and a pyorrhea expert. And they're all waiting for me these ten
minutes! I must run.

"I'll return inside five minutes," he called back as the door to the hall
was closing upon him.--"Miss Judson, please tell those people in the
reception-room to be patient."

He did enter Doctor Hadley's office, although no sufferer from pyorrhea
or appendicitis awaited him. Instead, he used the telephone for two
calls: one to the president of the board of health; the other to the
chief of police. Fortunately, he caught both at their offices,
addressing them familiarly by their first names and talking to them most
emphatically and confidentially.

Back in his own quarters, he was patently elated.

"I told him so," he assured Miss Judson, but embracing Daughtry in the
happy confidence. "Doctor Granville backed me up. Straight pyorrhea, of
course. That knocks the operation. And right now they're jolting his
gums and the pus-sacs with emetine. Whew! A fellow likes to be right. I
deserve a smoke. Do you mind, Mr. Daughtry?"

And while the steward shook his head, Doctor Emory lighted a big Havana
and continued audibly to luxuriate in his fictitious triumph over the
other doctor. As he talked, he forgot to smoke, and, leaning quite
casually against the chair, with arrant carelessness allowed the live
coal at the end of his cigar to rest against the tip of one of Kwaque's
twisted fingers. A privy wink to Miss Judson, who was the only one who
observed his action, warned her against anything that might happen.

"You know, Mr. Daughtry," Walter Merritt Emory went on enthusiastically,
while he held the steward's eyes wit