“You’ve got rheumatism in more places than your little finger,” he assured Daughtry.  “There’s a touch right here, I’ll wager, on your forehead.  One moment, please.  Move if I hurt you, Otherwise sit still, because I don’t intend to hurt you.  I merely want to see if my diagnosis is correct.—­There, that’s it.  Move when you feel anything.  Rheumatism has strange freaks.—­Watch this, Miss Judson, and I’ll wager this form of rheumatism is new to you.  See.  He does not resent.  He thinks I have not begun yet . . . "

And as he talked, steadily, interestingly, he was doing what Dag Daughtry never dreamed he was doing, and what made Kwaque, looking on, almost dream he was seeing because of the unrealness and impossibleness of it.  For, with a large needle, Doctor Emory was probing the dark spot in the midst of the vertical lion-lines.  Nor did he merely probe the area.  Thrusting into it from one side, under the skin and parallel to it, he buried the length of the needle from sight through the insensate infiltration.  This Kwaque beheld with bulging eyes; for his master betrayed no sign that the thing was being done.

“Why don’t you begin?” Dag Daughtry questioned impatiently.  “Besides, my rheumatism don’t count.  It’s the nigger-boy’s swelling.”

“You need a course of treatment,” Doctor Emory assured him.  “Rheumatism is a tough proposition.  It should never be let grow chronic.  I’ll fix up a course of treatment for you.  Now, if you’ll get out of the chair, we’ll look at your black servant.”

But first, before Kwaque was leaned back, Doctor Emory threw over the chair a sheet that smelled of having been roasted almost to the scorching point.  As he was about to examine Kwaque, he looked with a slight start of recollection at his watch.  When he saw the time he startled more, and turned a reproachful face upon his assistant.

“Miss Judson,” he said, coldly emphatic, “you have failed me.  Here it is, twenty before twelve, and you knew I was to confer with Doctor Hadley over that case at eleven-thirty sharp.  How he must be cursing me!  You know how peevish he is.”

Miss Judson nodded, with a perfect expression of contrition and humility, as if she knew all about it, although, in reality, she knew only all about her employer and had never heard till that moment of his engagement at eleven-thirty.

“Doctor Hadley’s just across the hall,” Doctor Emory explained to Daughtry.  “It won’t take me five minutes.  He and I have a disagreement.  He has diagnosed the case as chronic appendicitis and wants to operate.  I have diagnosed it as pyorrhea which has infected the stomach from the mouth, and have suggested emetine treatment of the mouth as a cure for the stomach disorder.  Of course, you don’t understand, but the point is that I’ve persuaded Doctor Hadley to bring in Doctor Granville, who is a dentist and a pyorrhea expert.  And they’re all waiting for me these ten minutes!  I must run.