“Don't tell me that grip turns a young Hercules's legs to lamp-wicks?” I objected.
“Grip does if the young Hercules's legs are fools enough to carry him out and around the city with a temperature of one-naught-four-point-two,” retorted the Little Red Doctor with bitter exactitude. “Under such conditions grip turns to pneumonia. And pneumonia is the favorite ally of my old friend, Death.”
“You don't mean that the Gnome is going to die?”
“Not of pneumonia: that fight was fought out some weeks ago. But what pneumonia doesn't do to a young Hercules worry may. Another aid of my old friend, Death, worry is. That's a bothersome Gnome, tossing about in the heat with his sick brain full of plots to get away and no legs to carry'em out. His next try will be his last.”
“Then he got away once?”
“On all fours. As far as the sidewalk. There Cyrus the Gaunt and the Bonnie Lassie found him and brought him back. Cyrus was on duty again last night.”
“I began to see. I'm to be watchdog. It's No. 7, isn't it? At what hour?”
“No. 7. Top floor. Nine o'clock.”
“I'll be there.”
Thanks for neighborly services, which are a taken-for-granted part of our close-pressed life, are not deemed good form in Our Square. The Little Red Doctor nodded and prepared to pass on to the rounds of his unending bout with his old friend and antagonist, Death. I detained him.