The Flopper's tongue made a greedy circuit of his upper and under lips, and he hitched his chair closer to the table.
A flush spread over Pale Face Harry's cheeks, and his eyes, abnormally bright, grew brighter.
"You're all right, Doc," he assured Doc Madison anxiously. "You're all right."
"U-uu-mm!" cooed Helena excitedly. "Go on, Doc--go on!"
"Listen," said Doc Madison, his voice lowered a little. "I found this tucked away as a filler in a corner of the newspaper this evening. It's headed, 'A New Cult,' with an interrogation mark after it. Now listen, while I read it:"
Needley, Maine, offers no attraction for aspiring young medical men. One who tried it recently, and who pulled down his shingle in disgust after a week, says competition is too strong, as the village is obsessed with the belief that they have a sort of faith-healer in their midst to whom is attributed cures of all descriptions stretching back for a generation or more. The healer, he adds, who rejoices in the name of the Patriarch and lives in solitude a mile or so from the village, is something of an anomaly in himself, being both deaf and dumb. We--
"But that's all that interests us," said Doc Madison, as he stopped reading abruptly and lifted his head to scrutinize his companions quizzically.
Pale Face Harry's eyes had lost their gleam and dulled--he gaped reproachfully at Doc Madison. Helena's small mouth drooped downward in a disappointed _moue_. Only the Flopper evidenced enthusiastic response.
"Sure!" he chortled. "Sure t'ing! I see. De old geezer'll have a pile of shekels hid away, an' he lives by his lonesome a mile from de town. We sneaks down dere, croaks de guy wid de queer monaker, an' beats it wid de shekels--sure!"
Doc Madison turned a sad gray eye on the Flopper.
"Flopper," said he pathetically, "your soul, like your bones, runs to rank realism. No; we don't 'croak de guy'--we cherish him, we nurse him, we fondle him. He's our one best bet, and we fold him to our breasts tenderly, and we protect him from all harm and danger and sudden death."
"Mabbe," said the Flopper, "I got de wrong dope. Some of dem words you read I ain't hip to. Wot's anymaly mean?"
"Anomaly?"--Doc Madison reached for his glass, tossed off the contents and set it down. "It means, Flopper, in this particular instance," he said gravely, "that there shouldn't be any interrogation point after the heading."