In vain did Esme employ her most winning arts of persuasion to get more from the wily charlatan.  He enjoyed being teased, but he was obdurate.  Accordingly she promised for herself and Hal.

But Hal was not as easily persuaded.  He shrank from the thought of ever again setting foot in the Certina premises.  Only Esme’s most artful pleading that he should not so sorely disappoint his father finally won him over.

At the Certina “shop,” on the appointed day, the fiances were ushered in with unaccustomed formality.  They found gathered in the magnificent executive offices all the heads of departments of the vast concern, a quiet, expectant crowd.  There were no outsiders other than Hal and Esme.  Dr. Surtaine, glossy, grave, a figure to fill the eye roundly, sat at his glass-topped table facing his audience.  Above him hung Old Lame-Boy, eternally hobbling amidst his fervid implications.

Waving the newcomers to seats directly in front of him, the presiding genius lifted a benign hand for silence.

“My friends,” he said, in his unctuous, rolling voice, “I have an important announcement to make.  The Certina business is finished.”

There was a silence of stunned surprise as the speaker paused to enjoy his effect.

“Certina,” he pursued, “has been the great triumph of my career.  I might almost say it has been my career.  But it has not been my life, my friends.  The whole is greater than the part:  the creator is greater than the thing he creates.  They say, ‘Surtaine of Certina.’  It should be, ‘Certina of Surtaine.’  There’s more to come of Surtaine.”

His voice dropped to the old, pleading, confidential tone of the itinerant; as if he were beguiling them now to accept the philosophy which he was to set forth.

“What is life, my dear friends?  Life is a paper-chase.  We rush from one thing to another, Little Daisy Happiness just one jump ahead of us and Old Man Death grabbing at our coat-tails.  Well, before he catches hold of mine,”—­the splendid bulk and vitality of the man gave refutation to the hint of pathos in the voice,—­“I want to run my race out so that my children and my children’s children can point to me and say, ’One crowded hour of glorious life is worth a cycle of Cathay.’”

With a superb gesture he indicated Hal and Esme, who, he observed with gratification, seemed quite overcome with emotion.

“That is why, my friends, I am withdrawing certina, and turning to fresh fields; if I may say so, fields of more genteel endeavor.  Certina has made millions.  It could still make millions.  I could sell out for millions to-day.  But, in the words of the sweet singer, I come to bury it, not to praise it.  Certina has done its grand work.  The day of medicine is almost over.  Interfering laws are being passed.  The public is getting suspicious of drugs.  Whether this is just or unjust is not the question which I am considering.  I’ve always wanted my business to be high-class.  You can’t run a high-class business when the public is on to you.