"Well, now, have we seen all, Doctor Steward?" one of the girls said. "All the worst cases? It's really quite a new sensation, you know, and I always go in for new sensations."
"Did ye show the young leddies Schuabe?" said the doctor to the chaplain.
"Bless my soul!" he replied, "I must be going mad myself. I'd quite forgotten to show you Schuabe."
"Who is Schuabe?" said the youngest of the sisters, a girl just fresh from school at Saint Leonards.
"Oh, Maisie!" said the eldest. "Surely you remember. Why, it's only five years ago. He was the Manchester millionaire who went mad after trying to blow up the tomb of Christ. I think that was it. It was in all the papers. A young clergyman found out what he'd been trying to do, and then he went mad—this Schuabe creature, I mean, not the clergyman."
"Every one likes to have a look at this patient," said the doctor. "He has a little sleeping-room of his own and a special attendant. His money was all confiscated by order of the Government, but they allow two hundred a year for him. Otherwise he would be among the paupers."
The girls giggled with pleasurable anticipation.
The doctor unlocked a door. The party entered a fairly large room, simply furnished. In an arm-chair a uniformed attendant was sitting, reading a sporting paper.
The man sprang up and saluted as he heard the door open.
On a bed lay the idiot. He had grown very fat and looked healthy. The features were all coarsened, but the hair retained its colour of dark red.