“Oh, that’s his pet ferret and boon companion.”

“Not his only companion.  There’s some one with him,” I said.  “A woman.”

“I don’t admire her taste in romance,” said Ned.

“Nor her discretion.  You know what they say:  ’A dollar or a woman never safe alone with Ely Crouch.’”

“My dollars certainly weren’t,” observed Ned.

“How did he ever defend your suit for an accounting?” I asked.

“Heedlessness on my side, a crooked judge on his.  Stop spying on my neighbor’s flirtations and look here.”

I turned and got a shock.  The handbag lay open on the desk, surrounded by a respectable-sized fortune in bank-notes.

“Pretty much all that the Honorable Ely has left me,” he added.

“Is it enough to go on with, Ned?” I asked.

He smiled at me.  “Plenty for my time.  You forget.”

For the moment I had forgotten.  “But what on earth are you going to do with all that ready cash?”

“Carry out a brilliant idea.  I conceived it after you had handed down your verdict.  Went around to the bank and quietly drew out the lot.  I’ve planned a wild and original orgy.  A riot of dissipation in giving.  Think of the fun one can have with that much tangible money.  Already to-day I’ve struck one man dumb and reduced another to mental decay, by the simple medium of a thousand-dollar bill.  Miracles!  Declare a vacation, Chris, and come with me on my secret and jubilant bat, and we’ll work wonders.”

“And after?” I asked.

“Oh, after!  Well, there’ll be no further reason for the ’permanent possibility of sensation’ on my part.  That’s your precious science’s best definition of life, I believe.  It doesn’t appeal to one as alluring when the sensation promises to become—­well, increasingly unpleasant.”

There was no mistaking his meaning.  “I can’t have that, my son,” I protested.

“No?  That’s a purely professional prejudice of yours.  Look at it from my point of view.  Am I to wait to be strangled by invisible hands, rather than make an easy and graceful exit?  Suicide!  The word has no meaning for a man in my condition.  If you’ll tell me there’s a chance, one mere, remote human chance—­” He paused, turning to me with what was almost appeal in his glance.  How I longed to lie to him!  But Ned Worth was the kind that you can’t lie to.  I looked at him standing there so strong and fine, with all the mirthful zest of living in his veins, sentenced beyond hope, and I thought of those terrible lines of another man under doom: 

  “I never saw a man who looked
  So wistfully at the day.”

We medical men learn to throw a protective film over our feelings, like the veil over the eagle’s eye.  We have to.  But I give you my word, I could not trust my voice to answer him.

“You see,” he said; “you can’t.”  His hand fell on my arm.  “I’m sorry, Chris,” he said in that winning voice of his; “I shouldn’t plague you for something that you can’t give me.”