Part 57

“Aftermath.”

“Of what?”

“Your cancer talk.”

“Anything definite?”

“Definite, indeed! Between fifteen and twenty of the members went away from that meeting where you talked, suspecting themselves of cancer.”

“That’s too many.”

“Yes. Ten of them had their fears set at rest right away.”

“I’m sorry to have frightened them; but one has to do a little harm in aiming at almost any good.”

“This was worth it. Half a dozen others had minor operations.”

“Perhaps saving major ones later.”

“Very likely. And four of them actually had cancer. Three out of the four are going to be well women. The fourth has an even chance. Dr. Strong, I don’t think you’ve done so good a day’s work since you brought health into this house.”

“I thank you,” said the doctor simply; “I think you are right. And you’ve given me the most profound and about the rarest satisfaction with which the physician is ever rewarded.”

“And that is?” she asked.

“The practical certainty of having definitely saved human life,” said the Health Master.

IX. THE GOOD GRAY DOCTOR

A twenty-dollar bill! Crisp, fresh, and golden, it rose monumentally from the basis of nickels, dimes, and quarters which made up the customary collection of the Bairdstown Memorial Church. Even the generosity of the Clyde family, who, whenever they spent a week-end at Mr. Clyde’s farm outside the little city, attended the Sunday services, looked meager and insignificant beside its yellow-backed splendor. Deacon Wilkes, passing the plate, gazed at it in fascination. Subsequent contributors surreptitiously touched it in depositing their own modest offerings, as if to make certain of its substance. It was even said at the Wednesday Sewing Circle that the Rev. Mr. Huddleston, from his eminence in the pulpit, had marked its colorful glint with an instant and benign eye and had changed the final hymn to one which specially celebrated the glory of giving.

In the Clyde pew also there was one who specially noted the donor, but with an expression far from benign. Dr. Strong’s appraising glance ranged over the plump and glossy perfection of the stranger, his symphonic grayness, beginning at his gray-suède-shod feet, one of which unobtrusively protruded into the aisle, verging upward through gray sock and trouser to gray frock coat, generously cut, and terminating at the sleek gray head. Even the tall hat which the man dandled on his knees was gray. Against this Quakerish color-scheme the wearer’s face stood out, large, pink, and heavy-jowled, lighted by restless brown eyes. His manner was at once important and reverent, and his “amen” a masterpiece of unction. No such impressive outlander had visited Bairdstown for many a moon.

After the service the visitor went forward to speak with Mr. Huddleston. At the same time Dr. Strong strolled up the aisle and contrived to pass the two so, as to obtain a face-to-face view of the stranger.

“At nine o’clock to-morrow, then, and I shall be delighted to see you,” the pastor was saying as Dr. Strong passed.

“Good-morning, Professor,” said Dr. Strong, with an accent on the final word as slight as the nod which accompanied it.

“Good-morning! Good-morning!” returned the other heartily. But his glance, as it followed the man who had accosted him, was puzzled and not wholly untroubled.

“Who is your munificent friend?” asked Mrs. Clyde, as the Health Master emerged from the church and joined her husband and herself in their car.

“When I last ran across him he called himself Professor Graham Gray, the Great Gray Benefactor,” replied Dr. Strong.

“Dresses the part, doesn’t he?” observed Mr. Clyde. “Where was it that you knew him?”

“On the Pacific Coast, five years ago. He was then ‘itinerating’—the quack term for traveling from place to place, picking up such practice as may be had by flamboyant advertising. Itinerating in eyes, as he would probably put it.”

“A wandering quack oculist?”

“Optician, rather, since he carried his own stock of glasses. In fact that’s where his profit came in. He advertised treatment free and charged two or three dollars for the glasses, special rates to schoolchildren. The scheme is an old one and a devilish. Half of the children in San Luis Obispo County, where I chanced upon his trail, were wearing his vision-twisters by the time he was through with them.”

“What kind of glasses were they?”