Part 55

"It's a case of belief in diphtheria. I have no doubt I shall be able to reduce the morbid action soon. The child is already in the state of interior perception," she said, seeing in Millard a possible patient, and coming a little further out of the door.

"It's catching, I believe," said Millard. "Would you mind closing the door a moment while I speak with you?"

Miss Bowyer peered into the room to see Mrs. Martin giving Tommy a drink. Feeling secure, she softly closed the door, keeping hold of the handle. Then she turned to Millard.

"Did you wish to see me professionally?" she asked.

"Well," said Millard, "I think you might call it professionally. I live over on the west side. Do you know where the Graydon apartment building is?"

"Yes, oh, yes; I attended a patient near there once, in one of the brownstone houses on the other side of the street. He got well beautifully."

"Well, I live in the Graydon," said Millard.

"Yes," said Miss Bowyer, with a rising inflection, wondering what could be the outcome of this roundabout talk. "Is some member of your family sick?" she asked.

A bolt clicked behind the metaphysical healer, who turned with the alarm of a trapped mouse and essayed to push the door. Then, remembering what seemed more profitable game in front, she repeated her question, but in a ruffled tone, "Some member of your family?"

Charley laughed in spite of himself.

"Not of my family, but a relative," he said. "It is my cousin who is sick in this room, and I called to get you outside of the door. I beg your pardon for the seeming rudeness."

Miss Bowyer now pushed on the door in vain.

"You think this is a gentlemanly way to treat a lady?" she said, choking with indignation.

"It doesn't seem handsome, does it?" he said. "But do you think you have treated Mrs. Martin in a ladylike way?"

"I was called by her husband," she said.

"You are now dismissed by the wife."

"I will see Mr. Martin at once, and he will reinstate me."

"You will not see Mr. Martin. I shall not give you a chance. I am going to report you to the County Medical Society and the Board of Health at once. Have you reported this case of diphtheria, as the law requires?"

"No, I have not," said Miss Bowyer; "but I was going to do so to-day."

"I don't like to dispute the word of a lady," he said, "but you know that you are not a proper practitioner, and that in case of a contagious disease the Board of Health would put you out of here neck and heels, if I must speak so roughly. Mrs. Martin is my aunt. If you make any trouble, I shall feel obliged to have you arrested at once. If you go home quietly and do not say a word to Mr. Martin, I'll let you off. You have no doubt lost patients of this kind before, and if I look up your record--"

"My hat and cloak are in there," said Miss Bowyer.

"If you renounce the case and say no more to Mr. Martin I will not follow you up," said Charley; "but turn your hand against Mrs. Martin, and I'll spend a thousand dollars to put you in prison."

This put a new aspect on the case in Miss Bowyer's mind. That Mrs. Martin had influential friends she had not dreamed. Miss Bowyer had had one tilt with the authorities, and she preferred not to try it again.

"My hat and cloak are in there," she repeated, pushing on the door.

"Stand aside," said Millard, "and I will get them."

Somehow Millard had reached Miss Bowyer's interior perception and put her into the conscious, impressible, passive state, in which his will was hers. She moved to the other side of the dark hall in such a state of mind that she could hardly have told whether the magnetism of her brain was in the cerebrum or in the cerebellum or in a state of oscillation between the two.

"Aunt Hannah," called Millard, "open the door."

The bolt was shoved back by Mrs. Martin. Millard opened the door a little way, holding the knob firmly in his right hand. Mrs. Martin stood well out of sight behind the door, from an undefined fear of getting in range of Miss Bowyer, whose calm bullying had put Mrs. Martin into some impassive state not laid down in works on Christian Science.