"The first of it sounds like a
Persian rug."

"My Hindu birth name," says he.

"I'd have bet you wa'n't a domestic filler," says I. "The Pinphoodle is
English, ain't it?"

He smiles like I'd asked him to split a pint with me, and says that it
was.

"But the tag on the end--J. R. D.--I passes up," says I. "Don't stand
for Judge of Rent Dodgers, does it?"

"Those letters," says he, makin' another merry face, "represent the
symbols of my Vedic progression."

"If I'd stopped to think once more, I'd fetched that," says I.

It was a jolly. I've never had the Vedic progression--anyways, not had
enough to know it at the time--but I wasn't goin' to let him stun me
that way.

Later on I got next to the fact that he was some kind of a healer, and
that the proper thing to do was to call him Doc. Seems he had a
four-by-nine office on the top floor back, over the Studio, and that he
was just startin' to introduce the Vedic stunt to New York. Mostly he
worked the mailorder racket. He showed me his ad in the Sunday personal
column, and it was all to the velvet. Accordin' to his own
specifications he was a head-liner in the East Indian philosophy
business, whatever that was. He'd just torn himself away from the
crowned heads of Europe for an American tour, and he stood ready to
ladle out advice to statesmen, tinker up broken hearts, forecast the
future, and map out the road to Wellville for millionaires who'd gone
off their feed.

He sure had a full bag of tricks to draw from; but I've noticed that the
more glass balls you try to keep in the air at once, the surer you are
to queer the act. And Pinphoodle didn't look like a gent that kept the
receivin' teller workin' overtime.

There was something about him, though, that was kind of dignified. He
was the style of chap that would blow his last dime on havin' his collar
'n' cuffs polished, and would go without eatin' rather than frisk the
free lunch at a beer joint. He was willin' to talk about anything but
the female with the gimlet eyes and the keen-cutter tongue.

"She is a mistaken, misguided person," says he. "And by the way,
Professor McCabe, there is a fire-escape, I believe, which leads from my
office down to your back windows. Would it be presuming too much if I
should ask you to admit me there occasionally, in the event of my
being--er--pursued again?"

"It ain't a board bill, is it, Doc?" says I.

"Nothing of the kind, I assure you," says he.

"Glad to hear i