Part 60

“Bairdstown is my own place, partly. I know the people and they know me and I won’t sit quiet and see ‘em put upon. I vote ‘Yes.’”

“Make it unanimous!” said Clyde. “What’s the first move of the army of relief? I’m in on this somewhere, Strong.”

“Contribute your car for a couple of days, then, and we’ll go out on a still hunt for the elusive clue and the shy and retiring evidence. In other words, we’ll scour the county, and look up some of these local testimonials which the Great Gray One gathered in last year, and now prints in the ‘Bugle.’”

“And I’ll stop in town and see Mr. Huddleston to-morrow,” said Mrs. Sharpless.

“You won’t get any results,” prophesied the Health Master. “But, anyway, get him to come to the Gray lecture on Tuesday evening. We’ll need him.”

During the ensuing two and a half days and two nights Mrs. Clyde had speech of her husband but once; and that was at 2 a.m. when he woke her up to tell her that he was having the time of his life, and she replied by asking him whether he had let the cat in, and returned to her dreams.

Bairdstown’s Suffering Womanhood—as per advertisement—turned out extensively and self-commiseratingly to the free lecture of Tuesday evening, bringing with them a considerable admixture of the male populace, curious, cynical, or expectant. On the platform sat a number of “special guests,” including the Rev. Mr. Huddleston, mild of face and white of hair, and the Honorable Silas Harris, owner of the “Bugle.”

“Cured” patients, to the number of half a dozen, fidgeted in the seats of honor with expressions of conscious and pleasurable importance.

“They appear to be enjoying poor health quite literally,” whispered Clyde to Dr. Strong, as the two, begrimed with the dust of a long day’s travel just finished, slipped quietly into side seats.

At once the entertainment began. A lank, harshfaced, muscular man whom Professor Gray introduced as his assistant, seated himself at the piano, and struck a chord, whereupon the Professor, in a powerful voice, sang what he termed the “Hymn of Healing,” inviting the audience to “assist” in the chorus, which gem of poesy ran as follows:—

“Ye shall be healed! Ye shall be healed! Trust in the gospel advice. Cured by the herbs of the wood and the field; Healed without money or price.”

“Some poetic license in that last line,” murmured Clyde to his companion.

“The next portion of our programme,” announced the Great Gray Benefactor, “will be corroborative readings from the Good Book.” And he proceeded to deliver in oratorical style sundry Bible quotations so patched together and garbled as to ascribe, inferentially, miraculous powers to the Gospel Herbs. Then came the lecture proper, which was merely an amplification of the “Bugle” advertisement, interspersed with almanac funny stories and old jokes.

“And now, before our demonstration,” concluded Professor Graham Gray, “if there is any here seeking enlightenment or help, let him rise. This is your meeting, dear friends, as much as mine; free to your voices and your needs, as well as to your welcome presence here. I court inquiry and fair investigation. Any questions? If not, we—”

“One moment!” The whole assemblage turned, as on a single pivot, to the side aisle where Dr. Strong had risen and now stood, tall, straight, and composed, waiting for silence.

“Our friend on the right has the floor,” said the Professor suavely.

“You state that this God-given secret remedy was imparted to you for the relief of human misery?” asked Dr. Strong.

“Thousands of grateful patients attest it, my friend.”

“Then, with human beings suffering and dying all about you, why do you continue to profit by keeping it secret?”

Down sat the questioner. A murmur rose and ran, as the logic of the question struck home. But the quack had his answer pat.

“Does not the Good Book say that the laborer is worthy of his hire? Do your regular physicians, of whom I understand you are one, treat cases for nothing? Ah,” he went on, outstretching his hands to the audience with a gesture of appeal, “the injustice which I have suffered from the jealousy and envy of the medical profession! Never do I enter a town without curing many unfortunates that the regular doctors have given up as hopeless. Hence the violence of their attacks upon me. But I forgive them their prejudice, as I pity their ignorance.”

Some applause followed the enunciation of this noble sentiment.

“We have with us to-night,” pursued the speaker, quick to catch the veering sentiment, “a number of these marvelous cures. You shall hear from the very mouths of the saved ones testimony beyond cavil. I will call first on Mrs. Amanda Gryce, wife of Mr. Stanley Gryce, the well and favorably known laundryman. Speak up clearly, Mrs. Gryce, and tell your story.”

“It’s two years now that I been doctorin’,” said the lady thus adjured, in a fluttering voice. “I doctored with a allopathic physician here, an’ with a homypath over to Roxton, an’ with a osty-path down to Worthington, an’ with Peruny in betwixt, an’ they didn’t any of ‘em do me no good till I tried Professor Gray. He seen how I felt without askin’ me a question. He just pulled down my eyelid an’ looked at it. ‘You’re all run down; gone!’ says he. An’ thet’s jest what I was. So he treated me with his herb medicine an’ I feel like a new woman. An’ I give Professor Graham Gray the credit an’ the thanks of a saved woman.”

“Not to mention seven dollars an’ a half,” supplemented a mournful drawl from the audience.

“You hush, Stan Gryce!” cried the healed one, shrill above the laughter of the ribald. “Would you begrutch a few mizzable dollars for your poor, sufferin’ wife’s health?”

An alarmed child of ten was next led forward and recited in sing-song measure:—

“I—had—the—fits—for—most—three— years—and—I—was—cured—by Gospel—Herbs—and—I—have—come—here—to—say—God—bless—my—dear benefactor—Professor—Graham—Gray,”—and sat down hard at the last word, whereupon a tenor squeak in the far gallery took up the refrain: