“Well, Wharton,” said he, with a strange, shapeless smile, “how do you find me?  Don’t you think I’m getting a fine fellow?  Growing like a pumpkin, by Jove!  I’ve changed the size of my collars three times in a month and the new ones are too tight already.”  He laughed—­as he had spoken—­in a thick, muffled voice and I made shift to produce some sort of smile in response to his hideous facial contortion.

“You don’t seem to like the novelty, my child,” he continued gaily and with another horrible grin.  “Don’t like this softening of the classic outlines, hey?  Well, I’ll admit it isn’t pretty, but, bless us! what does that matter at my time of life?”

I looked at him in consternation as he stood, breathing quickly, with that uncanny smile on his enormous face.  It was highly unprofessional of me, no doubt, but there was little use in attempting to conceal my opinion of his case.  Something inside his chest was pressing on the great veins of the neck and arms.  That something was either an aneurysm or a solid tumor.  A brief examination, to which he submitted with cheerful unconcern, showed that it was a solid growth, and I told him so.  He knew some pathology and was, of course, an excellent anatomist, so there was no avoiding a detailed explanation.

“Now, for my part,” said he, buttoning up his waistcoat, “I’d sooner have had an aneurysm.  There’s a finality about an aneurysm.  It gives you fair notice so that you may settle your affairs, and then, pop! bang! and the affair’s over.  How long will this thing take?”

I began to hum and haw nervously, but he interrupted:  “It doesn’t matter to me, you know, I’m only asking from curiosity; and I don’t expect you to give a date.  But is it a matter of days or weeks?  I can see it isn’t one of months.”

“I should think, Challoner,” I said huskily, “it may be four or five weeks—­at the outside.”

“Ha!” he said brightly, “that will suit me nicely.  I’ve finished my job and rounded up my affairs generally, so that I am ready whenever it happens.  But light your pipe and come and have a look at the museum.”

Now, as I knew (or believed I knew) by heart every specimen in the collection, this suggestion struck me as exceedingly odd; but reflecting that his brain might well have suffered some disturbance from the general engorgement, I followed him without remark.  Slowly we passed down the corridor that led to the “museum wing,” walked through the ill-smelling laboratories (for Challoner prepared the bones of the lower animals himself, though, for obvious reasons, he acquired the human skeletons from dealers) and entered the long room where the main collection was kept.