“Well, there’s a good deal of live steam under high pressure about here; I really don’t know much about steam-fitters’ work, but if it were plumbing I should certainly say, yes. Thank fortune, it is not plumbing, Mr. Onset.”
“But it is steam-fitting,” quoth Onset, now becoming positive, his mental process very inconsequent, as with many of his type. “Now, Doctor, I’d like to ask you just one question, seriously you know, strictly private. I ought not to ask it but I really must, under the circumstances. Mrs. Thorn has told me considerable about vibrations; now any fool can see that vibrations are not good for steam pipes, yet here we are. Now tell me frankly, do you think Mrs. Thorn’s meditations can affect or be affected by all this around us. She told me, most positively, that her meditations vibrating to me must not leak out—— Oh I wish she would accelerate a little if any good is to come of it.”
The Doctor at once made a plunge for his handkerchief, and blew his nose, enough to create more vibrations; then,
“Well, Mr. Onset, your perspicacity is remarkable; I never met anyone who detected possibilities, aye, even probabilities, more quickly than you do.” Onset felt flattered, the Doctor gave him time to pat himself on the back, and then,
“But there’s nothing like having one’s mind prepared for emergencies. If anything should happen, why, just call on me, Mr. Onset. Fact is, I’m now so accustomed to accidents both mental and physical that when not killed in the first crash I generally pull through.”
“Thanks awfully, I certainly shall. Doctor, my man James is good enough in ordinary emergencies, but I doubt his use in accidents. James! Jamie! here, Jimmy! take me back where I won’t see this steam, the odor and its suggestions are both unpleasant. Good-bye, Doctor, I must now take a rest.”
Onset’s organs of speech were certainly all right, but his mental apparatus decidedly leaky, and something the matter with his legs.
“I trust the preliminary tonic may not lose its effect before nine P. M.,” mused the Doctor as he went to report to the other conspirators.
XII
AMATEUR TACTICS—A FRIGHTFUL CURE
DINNER served, the conspirators enjoyed a promenade on deck, keeping an eye upon Mr. Onset and Mrs. Thorn as they sat conversing. No doubt vibrations were at work, the most approved methods of the wonderful Mystic Department of the Sanitorium Universitasque making some sort of an impression; because, as Mrs. Thorn remarked afterwards, “Mr. Onset was already oscillating between the old and the new, and whenever that condition arose she felt sure that the preliminary tendencies of the occult influences towards a cure were already taking effect.” Mrs. Thorn could be quite as perspicacious as the Doctor when she chose, her theories decidedly new as well as lucid, in fact unique.