“What part of me are you going to start on?” I inquired with some interest.

“I think I shall alter the shape of your nose first,” he said.  “It’s practically a painless operation—­just one injection of hot paraffin wax under the skin.  After that you have only to keep quiet for a couple of hours so that the wax can set in the right shape.”

“What about the X-ray treatment?” I asked.

He shrugged his shoulders.  “That’s perfectly simple too.  Merely a matter of covering up everything except the part that we want exposed.  One uses a specially prepared sort of lead sheeting.  There is absolutely no danger or difficulty about it.”

I thought at first that he might be purposely minimizing both operations in order to put me at my ease, but as it turned out he was telling me nothing except the literal truth.

At half-past ten the next morning he came up to my room with Sonia in attendance, the latter carrying a Primus stove and a small black bag.

At his own suggestion I had stayed in bed, and from between the sheets I viewed their entrance not without a certain whimsical feeling of regret.  When one has had a nose of a particular shape for the best part of thirty years it is rather a wrench to feel that one is abandoning it for a stranger.  I passed my fingers down it almost affectionately.

McMurtrie, who appeared to be in the best of spirits, wished me good-morning in that silkily polite manner of his which I was getting to dislike more and more.  Sonia said nothing.  She simply put the things down on the table by my bedside, and then stood there with the air of sullen hostility which she seemed generally to wear in McMurtrie’s presence.

“I feel rather like a gladiator,” I said.  “Morituri te salutant!”

McMurtrie, who had taken a shallow blue saucepan out of the bag and was filling it with hot water, looked up with a smile.

“It will be all over in a minute,” he said, reassuringly.  “The only trouble is keeping the wax liquid while one is actually injecting it.  One has to stand it in boiling water until the last second.”

He put the saucepan on the stove, and then produced out of the bag a little china-clay cup, which he stood in the water.  Into this he dropped a small lump of transparent wax.

We waited for a minute until the latter melted, McMurtrie filling up the time by carefully sponging the bridge of my nose with some liquid antiseptic.  Then, picking up what seemed like an ordinary hypodermic syringe, he warmed it carefully by holding it close to the Primus.

“Now,” he said; “all you have to do is to keep perfectly still.  You will just feel the prick of the needle and the smart of the hot wax, but it won’t really hurt.  If you move you will probably spoil the operation.”

“Go ahead,” I answered encouragingly.

He dipped the syringe in the cup, and then with a quick movement of his hand brought it across my face.  I felt a sharp stab, followed instantly by a stinging sensation all along the bridge of the nose.  McMurtrie dropped the syringe at once, and taking the skin between his fingers began to pinch and mould it with swift, deft touches into the required shape.  I lay as motionless as possible, hoping that things were prospering.