He motioned me to be seated, at the same time taking a chair behind his writing-table. Was it, I wondered, by design or by accident that in the position he had assumed his face remained in the deep shadow, while my countenance was within the broad ray of sunlight that came in between the blind and the window-sash? There was something curious in his attitude, but what it was I could not determine.
“I called you in to-day, doctor,” he explained, resting his thin, almost waxen hands upon the table, “not so much for medical advice as to have a chat with you.”
“But the patient?” I observed. “Had I not better see her first, and chat afterwards?”
“No,” he responded. “It is necessary that we should first understand one another perfectly.”
I glanced at him, but his face was only a grey blotch in the deep shadow. Of its expression I could observe nothing. Who, I wondered, was this man?
“Then the patient is better, I presume?”
“Better, but still in a precarious condition,” he replied, in a snapping voice. Then, after a moment’s pause, he added, in a more conciliatory tone, “I don’t know, doctor, whether you will agree with me, but I have a theory that, just as every medical man and lawyer has his fee, so has every man his price!”
“I scarcely follow you,” I said, somewhat puzzled. “I mean that every man, no matter what his station in life, is ready to perform services for another, providing the sum is sufficient in payment.”
I smiled at his philosophy. “There is a good deal of truth in that,” I remarked; “but of course there are exceptions.”
“Are you one?” he inquired sharply, in a strange voice.