“Some day,” Eliza observed, “you’ll cry wolf-wolf once too often.”
He went three times a week to Cardiac’s office for treatment. The dry doctor had grown old; behind his dusty restraint, the prim authority of his manner, there was a deepening well of senile bawdry. He had a comfortable fortune, he cared little for his dwindling practice. He was still a brilliant bacteriologist: he spent hours over slides etched in flowering patterns of bacilli, and he was sought after by diseased prostitutes, to whom he rendered competent service.
He dissuaded the Gants from surgery. He was jealously absorbed in the treatment of Gant’s disease, scoffed at operations, and insisted he could give adequate relief by manipulation of the affected parts and the use of the catheter.
The two men became devoted friends. The doctor gave up entire mornings to the treatment of Gant’s disease. The consulting-room was filled with their sly laughter while scrofulous mountaineers glared dully at the pages of Life in the antechamber. As Gant sprawled out voluptuously on the table after his masseur had finished his work, he listened appreciatively to the secrets of light women, or to tidbits from books of pseudoscientific pornography, of which the doctor had a large number.
“You say,” he demanded eagerly, “that the monks petitioned the archbishop?”
“Yes,” said the doctor. “They suffered during the hot weather. He wrote’granted’across the petition. Here’s a photograph of the document.” He held the book open in his clean parched fingers.
“Merciful God!” said Gant, staring. “I suppose it’s pretty bad in those hot countries.”
He licked his thumb, smiling lewdly to himself. The late Oscar Wilde, for instance.
