“There’ll be no next time,” said Sypher gravely.

“Why not?  There’s always money in patent medicines.  For instance, in a new cure for obesity if properly worked.  A man like you can always get the money together.”

“And the cure for obesity?”

Shuttleworth’s dismal face contracted into the grimace which passed with him for a smile.

“Any old thing will do, so long as it doesn’t poison people.”

Uncomfortable under his chief’s silent scrutiny, he took off his spectacles, breathed on them, and wiped them with his handkerchief.

“The public will buy anything, if you advertise it enough.”

“I suppose they will,” said Sypher.  “Even Jebusa Jones’s Cuticle Remedy.”

Shuttleworth started and put on his spectacles.

“Why shouldn’t they buy the Remedy, after all?”

“You ask me that?” said Sypher.  All through the interview he had not shifted his position.  He sat fixed like a florid ghost.

The manager shuffled uneasily in his chair beside the desk, and cleared his throat nervously.

“I’m bound to,” said he, “in self-defense.  I know what you think of the Cure—­but that’s a matter of sentiment.  I’ve been into the thing pretty thoroughly, and I know that there’s scarcely any difference in the composition of the Remedy and the Cure.  After all, any protecting grease that keeps the microbes in the air out of the sore place does just as well—­sometimes better.  There’s nothing in patent ointment that really cures.  Now is there?”

“Are you going to the Jebusa Jones people?” asked Sypher.

“I have my wife and family,” the manager pleaded.  “I couldn’t refuse.  They’ve offered me the position of their London agent.  I know it must pain you,” he added hurriedly, “but what could I do?”

“Every man for himself and the devil take the hindmost.  So you will give me what they used to call my coup de grace.  You’ll just stab me dead as I lie dying.  Well, in a fortnight’s time you can go.”

The other rose.  “Thank you very much, Mr. Sypher.  You have always treated me generously, and I’m more than sorry to leave you.  You bear me no ill will?”

“For going from one quack remedy to another?  Certainly not.”

It was only when the door closed behind the manager that Sypher relaxed his attitude.  He put both hands up to his face, and then fell forward on to the desk, his head on his arms.

The end had come.  To that which mattered in the man, the lingering faith yet struggling in the throes of dissolution, Shuttleworth had indeed given the coup de grace.  That he had joined the arch-enemy who in a short time would achieve his material destruction signified little.  When something spiritual is being done to death, the body and mind are torpid.  Even a month ago, had Shuttleworth uttered such blasphemy within those walls Clem Sypher would have arisen in