ll--if it's a fact that you really
are ill? I don't think you are, but I'll see." Dr. Veiga's eyes said:
"How interesting your case is! You've had no luck this time. We must
make the best of things; but also we must face the truth. God knows I
don't want to boast, but I expect I can put you right, with the help of
your own strong commonsense."

Mr. Prohack, a connoisseur in human nature, noted the significances of
the Veiga glance, but he suspected that there might also be something
histrionic in it. Dr. Veiga examined heart, pulse, tongue. He tapped the
torso. He asked many questions. Then he took an instrument out of a
leather case which he carried, and fastened a strap round Mr. Prohack's
forearm and attached it to the instrument, and presently Mr. Prohack
could feel the strong pulsations of the blood current in his arm.

"Dear, dear!" said Dr. Veiga. "175. Blood pressure too high. Much too
high! Must get that down."

Eve looked as though the end of the world had been announced, and even
Mr. Prohack had qualms. Ten minutes earlier Mr. Prohack had been a
strong, healthy man a trifle unwell in a bedroom. He was suddenly
transformed into a patient in a nursing-home.

"A little catarrh," said Dr. Veiga.

"I've got no catarrh," said Mr. Prohack, with conviction.

"Yes, yes. Catarrh of the stomach. Probably had it for years. The
duodenum is obstructed. A little accident that easily happens."

He addressed himself as it were privately to Mrs. Prohack. "The duodenum
is no thicker than that." He indicated the pencil with which he was
already writing in a pocket-book. "We'll get it right."

"What is the duodenum?" Mr. Prohack wanted to cry out. But he was too
ashamed to ask. It was hardly conceivable that he, so wise, so prudent,
had allowed over forty years to pass in total ignorance of this
important item of his own body. He felt himself to be a bag full of
disconcerting and dangerous mysteries. Or he might have expressed it
that he had been smoking in criminal nonchalance for nearly half a
century on the top of a powder magazine. He was deeply impressed by the
rapidity and assurance of the doctor's diagnosis. It was wonderful that
the queer fellow could in a few minutes single out an obscure organ no
bigger than a pencil and say: "There is the ill." The fellow might be a
quack, but sometimes quacks were men of genius. His shame and his alarm
quickly vanished under the doctor's reassuring and bland manner. So much
s