Mackintavers stared, as at a ghost.
"I can't believe it!" he said. "Aiblins, now, it's some joke—some damned nonsense! Why, you were one of the finest surgeons in the country, a man at the top, not yet thirty——"
Bitterness seared itself across the face of Murray.
"That's exactly what broke me," he asserted in biting tones.
"But I don't understand!" blurted Mackintavers.
Willyum Hobbs made a gesture, an imploring gesture; across his homely, earnest features flitted a look of appeal, of anxious worry. He glanced at Murray as a dog eyes his troubled master, with love and uneasiness. But Douglas Murray laughed jeeringly, harshly.
"Come, Mackintavers, look alive! It was success that downed me—too much work. I had to keep going twenty hours a day to save human lives during the influenza epidemic. It started me working on dope. I knew better, of course, but thought myself strong.
"The dream book got me at last, like it gets all the fools. One day, in the middle of an operation, I broke down. I had to have a shot quick, and I got it. I had to do it openly, if the man on the table were not to die; so I did it. Inside of a week, the news had spread through the whole city.
"It spread everywhere. I made an effort to fight, of course; did my desperate best to conquer the dream book. In the end, I won the fight, but by that time my nerve was gone. Everyone passing me in the street knew that I was a dope fiend. It was whispered at me socially and financially—from all quarters. At last I woke up to the fact that my money and good repute were gone. I can still practise medicine—if I have the nerve."
"Hm!" grunted Sandy. "Why didn't you stick it out? Aiblins, now, a man like you!"