“Ride you, Doctor, on the day, the very anniversary, of our Saviour’s birth?”
“Our Saviour? Ain’t you a Jew?” Doctor Wilcox said.
“So I am. So I am. It always is slipping my mind. I’ve never given it its proper importance. So good of you to remind me. Your Saviour. That’s right. Your Saviour, undoubtedly your Saviour—and the ride for Palm Sunday.”
“You’re too damned smart,” Doctor Wilcox said.
“An excellent diagnosis, Doctor. I was always too damned smart. Too damned smart on the coast certainly. Avoid it, Horace. You haven’t much tendency but sometimes I see a gleam. But what a diagnosis—and without the book.”
“The hell with you,” Doctor Wilcox said.
“All in good time. Doctor,” Doc Fischer said. “All in good time. If there is such a place I shall certainly visit it. I have even had a very small look into it. No more than a peek, really. I looked away almost at once. And do you know what the young man said, Horace, when the good Doctor here brought him in? He said, ‘Oh, I asked you to do it. I asked you so many times to do it.’”
“On Christmas Day, too,” Doctor Wilcox said.
“The significance of the particular day is not important,” Doc Fischer said.
“Maybe not to you,” said Doctor Wilcox.
“You hear him, Horace?” Doc Fischer said. “You hear him? Having discovered my vulnerable point, my achilles tendon so to speak, the doctor pursues his advantage.”
“You’re too damned smart,” Doctor Wilcox said.
