The world had been his oyster to open.  He had cleaved it wide.  Ill-natured persons hinted, in reference to his business, that he had used poison rather than the knife wherewith to loosen the stubborn hinges of the bivalve.  Money gives back small echo to the cries of calumny, however.  And Dr. Surtaine’s Certina, that infallible and guaranteed blood-cure, eradicator of all known human ills, “famous across the map of the world,” to use one of its advertising phrases, under the catchword of “Professor Certain’s Certina, the Sure-Cure” (for he preserved the old name as a trade-mark), had made a vast deal of money for its proprietor.  Worthington estimated his fortune at fifteen millions, growing at the rate of a million yearly, and was not preposterously far afield.  In a city of two hundred thousand inhabitants, claimed (one hundred and seventy-five thousand allowed by a niggling and suspicious census), this is all that the most needy of millionaires needs.  It was all that Dr. Surtaine needed.  He enjoyed his high satisfaction as a hard-earned increment.

Something more than satisfaction beamed from his face this blustery March noon as he awaited the Worthington train at a small station an hour up the line.  He fidgeted like an eager boy when the whistle sounded, and before the cars had fairly come to a stop he was up the steps of the sleeper and inside the door.  There rose to meet him a tall, carefully dressed and pressed youth, whose exclamation was evenly apportioned between welcome and surprise.

“Dad!”

“Boy-ee!”

To the amusement of the other passengers, the two seized each other in a bear-hug.

“Oof!” panted the big man, releasing his son.  “That’s the best thing that’s happened to me this year.  George” (to the porter), “get me a seat.  Get us two seats together.  Aren’t any?  Perhaps this gentleman,” turning to the chair back of him, “wouldn’t mind moving across the aisle until we get to Worthington.”

“Certainly not.  Glad to oblige,” said the stranger, smiling.  People usually were “glad to oblige” Dr. Surtaine whether they knew him or not.  The man inspired good will in others.

“It’s nearly a year since I’ve set eyes on my son,” he added in a voice which took the whole car into his friendly confidence; “and it seems like ten.  How are you feeling, Hal?  You look chirp as a cricket.”

“Couldn’t possibly feel better, sir.  Where did you get on?”

“Here at State Crossing.  Thought I’d come up and meet you.  The office got on my nerves this morning.  Work didn’t hold me worth a cent.  I kept figuring you coming nearer and nearer until I couldn’t stand it, so I banged down my desk, told my secretary that I was going to California on the night boat and mightn’t be back till evening, hung the scrap-basket on the stenographer’s ear when she tried to hold me up to sign some letters, jumped out of the fifth-story window, and here I am.  I hope you’re as tickled to see me as I am to see you.”