Two sternly expressionless attendants led the Governor to the elevator. "You are discharged for conduct unbecoming a patient and a gentle."
"But I—"
"If it weren't for this," said one of the attendants coldly, indicating his white coat, "I'd call you out myself, you cad."
"Don't demean yourself, brother," urged the other attendant. "He'll suffer now."
A group of orderlies appeared. Those in front beat upon enamel sputum dishes with hammers used to test reflexes. After them came a number with dilators, tubes and other objects which they employed as fifes and flutes. The color-bearer dipped his caduceus to the ground while the band played the rogues' march. A doctor drew his scalpel and cut the Governor's buttons from the cuff of his jacket.
The elevator doors opened. The clerk peeled off a white smock and tossed it out. "Step to the rear of the car please," he urged the Governor.
Lampley stumbled in. The elevator swished upward, then ran backward for interminable miles. It stopped; mechanics with rubber wrenches, paper hammers and cloth screwdrivers removed the steel doors, replacing them with a glass one. The clerk moved the control lever; the elevator rose again.
Once more it was in the shaft lined with porcelain-faced bricks. The Governor noticed how meticulously they had been set in place, each fitting so neatly against the next, no course of mortar thicker than the one above or below.
The clerk left the door open and leaned against it as Lampley wandered between the rows of grand pianos. The drops from the stalactites tinkled as monotonously as before on the exposed strings of the instruments. Plink plink, plink plink, plink plunk. It seemed to him—he was by no means sure—that on his first visit the pianos had all been identical. Now they were rosewood, mahogany, maple, ebony. Some were enamelled a startling white, one gleamed in dull silver, the varnish on another sparkled with crushed glass. He paused before a grand of such modest finish and unobtrusive wood that it commanded instant attention among more flamboyant peers. The Governor sat down before it, striking a key with his middle finger. Plink. What a work is man, he thought; I will my finger to move and it moves—what incomparable engineering! Plink. He had forgotten even how to play a scale; the stalactites could do as well or better. Plink plink, plink plunk.