nion. 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 protec