“You have a rude boorish insistence of your own,” he cried at me hoarsely. “But I suppose I must value it for what it’s worth. It’s the custom to ask a fee for professional services.”
“You volunteered yours, you know.”
He shrugged his shoulders.
“Quite so,” he said. “The matter lies with you.”
“With you, I think. In visiting my father the other night you had no secret hope, I suppose, that we should pay you in the sort of coin you have already had too much of?”
“You insult me, sir.”
“Unwittingly, I assure you. Will you answer me one question? Is there the remotest chance of my father recovering from this attack?”
“Not the remotest—not of his definitely rallying even, I should say.”
“Is that only an opinion?”
“Bah! Miracles don’t occur in surgery. He is practically a dead man, I tell you.”