“If he went back outside, he’d stop all this stuff coming in, you’d think.”
“Maybe somebody’s just putting up a joke on us.”
“Funny kind of joke! Subscriptions to these magazines cost money.”
Stonor read off the titles of the magazines: “The Medical Record; The American Medical Journal; The Physician’s and Surgeon’s Bulletin.”
“Quite a scientific guy,” said Doctor Giddings, with curling lip.
“Strange, he gets so many papers and not a single letter!” remarked Father Goussard. “A friendless man!”
Gaviller picked up a round tin, one of several packed and addressed alike. He read the business card of a well-known tobacconist. “Smoking tobacco!” he said indignantly. “If the Company’s Dominion Mixture isn’t good enough for any man I’d like to know it! He has a cheek, if you ask me, bringing in tobacco under my very nose!”
“Tobacco!” cried Stonor. “It’s all very well about papers, but no man would waste good tobacco! It must be somebody who started in before Ben!”
Their own mail matter, that they had looked forward to so impatiently, was forgotten now.
When Ben Causton came back they bombarded him with questions. But this bag had come through locked all the way from Miwasa Landing, and Ben, even Ben, the great purveyor of gossip in the North, had heard nothing of any Doctor Imbrie on his way in. Ben was more excited and more indignant than any of them. Somebody had got ahead of him in spreading a sensation!