“What’s the matter with you all?” he demanded sarcastically.  “You look as though your faces pained you!  What’s the matter with you?  You’re bright enough ordinarily, Helena, and, Harry, you’re no dub—­what’s the matter with you?  Can’t you see it—­can’t you see it!  Why, it’s sticking out a mile—­it’s waiting for us!  The whole plant’s there and all we’ve got to do is get steam under the boilers.  We’ll have ’em coming for the cure from every State in the Union, and begging us to let them throw their diamond tiaras at us for a look-in at the shrine.  Don’t you see it—­can’t you get it—­can’t you get it!”

Helena bent suddenly over Doc Madison’s shoulder, her eyes opening wide with dawning comprehension.

“The cure?” she breathed.

“Sure—­the cure,” said Doc Madison earnestly.  “The new cult—­that’s us.  Get the people talking, show ’em something, and you’ll have to put up fences and ‘keep off the grass’ signs to stop the lame and the halt and the blind and the neurasthenics from crowding and suffocating to death for want of air.  We’ll start a shrine down there that’ll be a winner, and the railroads will be running excursion-rate pilgrimages inside of two months.”

Pale Face Harry’s chair creaked, as, like the Flopper, he now crowded it in toward the table.

“I get you!” said he feverishly.  “I get you!  I’ve read about them shrines—­only you gotter have churches, and a carload of crutches, and that sort of thing laying around.”

Doc Madison smiled pleasantly.

“Yes; you’ve got me, Harry—­only we’ll do the stage setting a little differently.  Mostly what is required is—­faith.  Get them going on that, and everybody that’s sick or near-sick in this great United States, that’s got the swellest collection of boobs and millionaires on earth, will swarm thitherward like bees—­there won’t be any one left in the sanatoriums throughout the length of this broad land of freedom but the bell boys and the elevator men.  Get them going, and all we’ve got to do is look out we don’t let anything get by us in the crush—­a snowball rolling down hill will size up like a plugged nickel alongside of a twenty-dollar gold piece when it gets to the bottom, compared with what we start rolling.”

“I’ve got you, too,” said Helena.  “But I don’t see where the faith is coming from, or how you’re going to get them coming.  You’ve got to show them—­you said so yourself—­even the boobs.  How are you going to do that?”

“Well,” said Doc Madison placidly, “we’ll start the show with—­a miracle.  I haven’t thought of anything more effective than that so far.”

“A what?” inquired Pale Face Harry, with a grin.

“A miracle,” repeated Doc Madison imperturbably.  “A miracle—­with the Flopper here in the star role.  The Flopper goes down there all tied up in knots, the high priest, alias the deaf and dumb healer, alias the Patriarch, lays his soothing hands upon him, the Flopper uncoils into something that looks like a human being—­and the trumpets blow, the band plays, and the box office opens for receipts.”