“Ah, my dear fellow, nowadays it doesn’t do to tell anyone of your own researches. The only way is to spring it upon the profession as a great triumph: just as Koch did his cure for tuberculosis. One must create an impression, if only with a quack remedy. The day of the steady plodder is past; it’s all hustle, even in medicine.”
“Well, you certainly did make an impression,” I said, smiling. “Your experiments were a revelation to the profession. They were talking of them at the hospital only yesterday.”
“H’m. They thought me an old fogey, eh? But, you see, I’ve been keeping pace with the times, Boyd. A man to succeed nowadays must make a boom with something, it matters not what. For years I’ve been experimenting in secret, and some day I will show them further results of my researches—and they will come upon the profession like a thunderclap, staggering belief.”
The old man chuckled to himself as he thought of his scientific triumph, and how one day he would give forth to the world a truth hitherto unsuspected.
We chatted for a long time, mostly upon technicalities which cannot interest the reader, until suddenly he said:
“I’m getting old, Boyd. These constant attacks I have render me unfit to go to town and sit in judgment on that pack of silly women who rush to consult me whenever they have a headache or an erring husband. I think that very soon I ought to retire. I’ve done sufficient hard work all the years since I was a ‘locum’ down in Oxfordshire. I’m worn out.”
“Oh, no,” I said. “You mustn’t retire yet. If you did, the profession would lose one of its most brilliant men.”
“Enough of compliments,” he snapped, turning wearily on his pillow. “I’m sick to death of it all. Better to retire while I have fame, than to outlive it. When I give up you will step into my shoes, Boyd, and it will be a good thing for you.”
Such a suggestion was quite unexpected. I had never dreamed that he contemplated handing over his practice to me. Certainly it would be a good thing for me if he did. It would give me a chance such as few men ever had. True, I was well known to his patients and had worked hard in his interests, but that he intended to hand his practice over to me I had never contemplated. Hence I thanked him most heartily. Yes, Sir Bernard had been my benefactor always.
“All the women know you,” he went on in his snappish way. “You are the only man to take my place. They would come to you; but not to a new man. All I can hope is that they won’t bore you with their domestic troubles—as they have done me,” and he smiled.