The Miracle Man

by Frank L. Packard

"Ah, no," he said; "far from it. Many will come with but the semblance of faith, and for those there can be no cure—that is evident on the face of it, is it not?"

They interviewed Thornton—and Thornton, too, talked to them, but the very presence of Mrs. Thornton was weightier far than words.

They interviewed the Holmes, and they interviewed Needley individually and collectively; and they interviewed Helena—but they did not interview the Patriarch. Here Helena barred their way—they were free to enter the cottage, to copy the names, the record of gifts inscribed in the book, already a long list for Needley had required no other incentive to give than the example that had been set—but that was all. Quietly, with demure simplicity, Helena, prompted by

Madison, like a priestess who guards some holy, inner shrine, told them that sensational notoriety had no place there—and the notoriety for that very cause became the greater! Not that they were denied a sight of the Patriarch's venerable and saintly form—they were permitted to catch glimpses of him on the beach, on the lawn, walking with bowed head in meditation, a figure whose simple majesty inspired words and columns of glowing tribute—but from personal contact, Helena and the Flopper, always in attendance, warded them off; retreating always to the privacy of the cottage, to the inner rooms.

All this had taken four days; and now, on the fourth day, there came to Needley the vanguard of those who sought this new healing power—just a few of them, two or three, like far, outflung skirmishers evidencing the presence of the army corps to follow. With the reporters, as far as Madison was concerned, it was simple enough; he had but to let them go their way, to let them revel in the stories that were on every tongue, to let them view with their own eyes facts, while he, modestly and diffidently, full of quiet earnestness, effaced himself, never thrusting himself forward, talking to them only when they pressed him—but the handling of the sufferers who would flock to Needley in response to a newspaper publicity and endorsement that had been beyond his wildest dreams, was quite another matter. Madison viewed the first arrivals—brought

in from the station on cot beds to the Waldorf Hotel—and retired to his room in the Congress Hotel to wrestle with the niceties and minutiæ of the problem.

"You see," said Madison to the tip of his cigar, as he tilted back his chair and extended his legs full length with his heels comfortably up on the table edge, "you see, I believe in faith all right—and that's no josh. But the trouble with faith is that it's about the scarcest article on earth—and I haven't got any more Floppers to lead the way." Madison adroitly sent the cigar ash through the window with a tap of his forefinger on the body of the cigar—he frowned, and for a long time sat musingly silent. Then he spoke again; this time addressing the toes of his boots: "With the house sold out for the season, the box-office doing itself proud and the audience crazy over the first two acts, how about Act Three—h'm?—how about Act Three? Kind of a delicate proposition, the staging of Act Three—and it's time for the curtain to go up. I can hear 'em stamping out front now. I can't pull off any more orgies like last Monday afternoon, even if I wanted to—but everybody's got to have a run for their money. Say, how about Act Three?"

Madison burned up quite a little tobacco in the interval before supper, and quite a little more afterward before the setting for his perplexing "Third Act" appeared to unfold itself satisfactorily before his mind—indeed, it was close onto

half past ten when, by a roundabout way, he very cautiously and silently approached the Patriarch's cottage.

In the front of the cottage, the Shrine-room, as he christened it, and the Patriarch's sleeping room were both dark. Madison passed around to the beach side—here, Helena's room was dark too, but in the Flopper's window, the end room next to the kitchen and woodshed, there was a light. The night was warm, and, though the shade was drawn, the window was open. Madison whistled softly, and the Flopper stuck out his head.