"The telephone was out of order," began Mrs. Tresslyn before she could produce the power to check the impulse to justify herself in the eyes of this brazen tormentor.
"Indeed?" said Lutie politely.
"My son shall never marry you," repeated the other, helplessly.
"Well," began Lutie slowly, a bright spot in each cheek, "all I have to say is that he will be extremely unfair to your grandchildren, Mrs. Tresslyn, if he doesn't."
CHAPTER XXI
A ground-floor window in an apartment building in Madison Avenue, north of Fifty-ninth street, displayed in calm black lettering the name "Dr. Braden L. Thorpe, M.D." On the panel of a door just inside the main entrance there was a bit of gold-leaf information to the effect that office hours were from 9 to 10 A.M. and from 2 to 4 P.M. There was a reception room and a consultation room in the suite. The one was quite as cheerless and uninviting as any other reception room of its kind, and the other possessed as many of the strange, terrifying and more or less misunderstood devices for the prolongation of uncertainty in the minds of the uneasy. During office-hours there was also a doctor there. Nothing was missing from this properly placarded and admirably equipped office,—nothing at all except the patients!
About the time that George Tresslyn fared forth into the world again, Thorpe hung out his shingle and sat himself down under his own gates to wait for the unwary. But no one came. The lame, the halt and even the blind had visions that were not to be dissipated by anything so trivial as a neat little sign in an office window. The name of Braden Thorpe was on the lips of every one. It was mentioned, not with horror or disgust, but as one speaks of the exalted genius whose cure for tuberculosis has failed, or of the man who found the North Pole by advertising in the newspapers, or of the books of Henry James. He was a person to steer clear of, that was all.
Every newspaper in the country discussed him editorially, paragraphically, and as an article of news. For weeks after the death of Templeton Thorpe and the publication of his will, not a day passed in which Braden Thorpe's outlandish assault upon civilisation failed to receive its country-wide attention in the press. And when editorial writers, medical sharps, legal experts and grateful reporters failed to avail themselves of the full measure of space set apart for their gluttony, ubiquitous "Constant Reader" rushed into print under many aliases and enjoyed himself as never before.