The Greatest Sci-Fi Books of Erle Cox. Erle Cox
down to the club. There they flushed MacArthur from a couch, where he was taking forty winks. MacArthur, taking his cue from Rickardson asked no questions, too pleased to see Dundas come to light to care about causes. They told him of Mac's latest war with John Harvey Pook. Pook had indiscreetly made an unmistakable reference to MacArthur from the pulpit. The town hummed with joy. Mac waited his time, and Pook gave him the chance. The vicar, puffed up with earthly pride, had attached a brass nameplate to his gate, bearing the legend "The Gums," as if the whole town did not know the vicarage. Then Mac stepped in, and bought the adjoining house, without a word to anyone. A week later on the gate adjoining that of the vicarage appeared an identical brass plate bearing the legend "The Teeth." John Harvey Pook hauled down his colours and his plate, and the town hummed again.
Afterwards Alan and MacArthur played a hundred up, and Rickardson criticised cheerfully and caustically, and the two players retaliated by charging the table up to his account. Then, as the afternoon was closing, they strolled across to the tennis courts, where Alan was promptly captured by Doris Bryce, and carefully placed on the feminine rack. Doris flattered herself she was wily and diplomatic, and she probed scientifically for information. Alan flattered himself he was more wily and more diplomatic. The result of the contest was somewhat of a draw. Doris obtained nothing that could satisfy her curiosity, but Alan found himself cornered, so that he was obliged to promise to play in a tournament on the following Saturday. He would gladly have avoided the engagement, but it would have taken a more clever man than he to do it gracefully. Doris was a little nettled at her failure to solve the mystery of Alan's disappearance, and promised herself to deal more fully with her victim at her leisure. She felt he owed an explanation to herself in the first place, and also to Marian Seymour. Moreover, she determined that Alan should be picked to play with Marian in the tournament, and that both should spend the evening at the bank afterwards. Who was this man, Alan Dundas, that he should turn aside from the eminently desirable fate that she had in store for him?
MacArthur had sat listening with mischievous amusement to the verbal duel between the two, and had, with malice aforethought, given deliberate assistance to Mistress Doris in cornering Alan for the tournament. Inwardly Alan called him anything but blessed, and finally resigned himself to what he now regarded as a wasted afternoon, for all time that was not spent in the society of Earani he looked upon as so long unlived. He had grudged his present visit to Glen Cairn, and more so he grudged the prospective one. In the end he hailed with pleasure the advent of Barry, who passed on his way from the hospital, and gave Dundas the excuse for taking his leave.
As the two men strolled away from the courts, Alan turned to Barry. "Dick, what's happened? You look elated about something."
"Lord forgive me, Alan, but I ought to look jolly well ashamed of myself, and I'm not. I've been guilty of rank professional misconduct. I've risked an act of manslaughter, morally at any rate, and I've got Walton into a condition of mental collapse. The worst of it is that I couldn't confess to Walton even if I were allowed to."
"Pretty good record for one day, Dicky. How did you do it all?"
"Well, you remember the yabber I had with Earani yesterday afternoon?"
"I remember you were discussing some of your usual objectionable subjects with her. The details were beyond me."
"Humph! Well, I discussed that particular subject because we had a case in the hospital. Characteristic and very clearly defined. Absolutely hopeless–at least, I said so, and I never heard of its yielding to treatment."
Alan laughed. "I remember that part of it, and Earani's mild contradiction of your statement. I got lost afterwards in the blaze of verbal fireworks that you both exhibited."
"Dun, do you notice that when she has absolutely pulverised one in an argument, Earani doesn't gloat? It's a most unfeminine characteristic."
Alan nodded. "I never argue with her now on matters of fact; it's no use; she is always right. What about your hopeless case?"
"Just this. She gave me a fluid of some sort, and told me to inject it, and guaranteed that so long as the patient were not dead, her treatment would wipe out the disease in six hours. She holds that where the organs are not actually destroyed no disease should be fatal."
"Well?"
"Just this, Dun; and this is where the professional misconduct comes in. The woman is Walton's patient. I slipped into the hospital this morning. Got the nurse out of the way and injected the stuff. Remember, I've not the faintest idea what it was I used, so if she had died I would have been morally guilty of her death. Though, mind you, Dun, she was moribund when I did it, and to all appearances had about two or three hours to live. Still, there would be the devil of a row if it were known.
"When I came in this evening I found Walton half off his head with bewilderment. The woman took a turn about ten, and Jove! when I left her half an hour ago, although she was weak and very low with what she'd been through, there was absolutely no indication of the disease. Walton doesn't know whether we were wrong in our diagnosis (and I'm absolutely sure we were not), or whether he has performed a miracle. He's anxious to report the case, and yet he's afraid to. You see, if he reports a cure he won't be believed, or he'll be asked to do it again, or, what is more likely, they'll say he is mistaken in his facts."
Alan chuckled. "Hard luck for Walton. Still, judging by results only, I don't think you have anything to fret about."
They had stopped at Barry's gate, and Alan refused his friend's invitation to go in. "Just as you say, Dun, I'm not fretting, and I ought to be. Tell that worker of miracles I'll be out to-morrow to see her. I've several thousand questions to ask her. I'm glad you have been seen in public again. Till to-morrow!" and Alan turned away to the club, where he picked up Billy B.B. and sped homeward, feeling satisfied that he had temporarily suppressed the current gossip.
Chapter XXII
"So the woman lives," said Earani. "There is no miracle about it, Dick. There are many things in your daily life that would have been miracles one hundred years ago that you pass over now without a second thought."
"I doubt if I could get Walton to look at it in that light. He almost feels that the woman has shown an indecent contempt for medical practice in recovering."
"You have not told him?" asked Alan.
"Hardly," replied Barry, with a laugh. "I haven't the nerve. The first question he would ask would be what drug I had used. I'd reply that I hadn't the faintest idea. Of course, he'd feel convinced then that I am a genius. He'd tell me so, too. No, Dun, when I tell Walton anything about it, I'll want to be able to tell him a good deal more than that."
"You are on the verge of many things now, Dick, but you could not go forward much further without the aid of Maxi's lens. Our race came to the same wall that stopped them until Maxi broke it down," said Earani.
"Then Maxi was the second of your great men?" asked Alan.
"Yes, and to my mind the greatest of the three. He spent his life on the one work and succeeded. They thought him mad at first. He knew that every living organism gave out light rays that the human eye cannot see. His lens is really an artificial eye that can detect these rays and convey them to the brain direct. He was originally attempting to invent a substitute for the natural eye in cases where it had been destroyed, when he first gathered the threads that he followed through all their windings until the great work was completed. It took him twenty-five years of uninterrupted labour, and what a labour it was! He faced the years of failure without flinching. He could make no converts to his hopes and his idea. On every side there was ridicule and derision, and against it all he never once faltered. Absolutely alone, and without the help of one friendly hand, he won through. His recognition came in his lifetime, and he bore his triumph as simply as he had borne his reverses. He put aside with a smile all the honours they offered him. 'You can give nothing I desire now but rest, and my work has won that for me,' was his answer when they asked him to name his own reward."
"He