“I’ll return inside five minutes,” he called back as the door to the hall was closing upon him.—­“Miss Judson, please tell those people in the reception-room to be patient.”

He did enter Doctor Hadley’s office, although no sufferer from pyorrhea or appendicitis awaited him.  Instead, he used the telephone for two calls:  one to the president of the board of health; the other to the chief of police.  Fortunately, he caught both at their offices, addressing them familiarly by their first names and talking to them most emphatically and confidentially.

Back in his own quarters, he was patently elated.

“I told him so,” he assured Miss Judson, but embracing Daughtry in the happy confidence.  “Doctor Granville backed me up.  Straight pyorrhea, of course.  That knocks the operation.  And right now they’re jolting his gums and the pus-sacs with emetine.  Whew!  A fellow likes to be right.  I deserve a smoke.  Do you mind, Mr. Daughtry?”

And while the steward shook his head, Doctor Emory lighted a big Havana and continued audibly to luxuriate in his fictitious triumph over the other doctor.  As he talked, he forgot to smoke, and, leaning quite casually against the chair, with arrant carelessness allowed the live coal at the end of his cigar to rest against the tip of one of Kwaque’s twisted fingers.  A privy wink to Miss Judson, who was the only one who observed his action, warned her against anything that might happen.

“You know, Mr. Daughtry,” Walter Merritt Emory went on enthusiastically, while he held the steward’s eyes with his and while all the time the live end of the cigar continued to rest against Kwaque’s finger, “the older I get the more convinced I am that there are too many ill-advised and hasty operations.”

Still fire and flesh pressed together, and a tiny spiral of smoke began to arise from Kwaque’s finger-end that was different in colour from the smoke of a cigar-end.

“Now take that patient of Doctor Hadley’s.  I’ve saved him, not merely the risk of an operation for appendicitis, but the cost of it, and the hospital expenses.  I shall charge him nothing for what I did.  Hadley’s charge will be merely nominal.  Doctor Granville, at the outside, will cure his pyorrhea with emetine for no more than a paltry fifty dollars.  Yes, by George, besides the risk to his life, and the discomfort, I’ve saved that man, all told, a cold thousand dollars to surgeon, hospital, and nurses.”

And while he talked on, holding Daughtry’s eyes, a smell of roast meat began to pervade the air.  Doctor Emory smelled it eagerly.  So did Miss Judson smell it, but she had been warned and gave no notice.  Nor did she look at the juxtaposition of cigar and finger, although she knew by the evidence of her nose that it still obtained.

“What’s burning?” Daughtry demanded suddenly, sniffing the air and glancing around.