ad for breakfast, I managed to get in my question:

"Ever in Colorado, Doctor?"

"Oh, dear me, no!"

Another ten dollars, and nothing accomplished!

The seventh Jones was again too old; the eighth was a pale hobbledehoy;
the ninth was a loathsome quack; the tenth had died that morning; the
eleventh was busy; the twelfth was a veterinary surgeon; the thirteenth
was an intern living at home with his widowed sister. Colorado? No, the
widowed sister was positive he had never been there. The fourteenth was
a handsome fellow of about thirty-five. He looked poor and threadbare,
and I had a glimpse of a shabby bed behind a screen. Patients obviously
did not often come his way, and his joy at seeing me was pitiful. I had
meant to try a bluff and get in my Colorado question this time free of
charge; but I hadn't the heart to do it. Slight pains in the head seemed
a safe complaint.

After a few questions he said he would have to make a thorough physical
examination.

"No clothes off!" I protested.

"It's essential," he said, and went on with something about the
radio-activity of the brain, and the vasomotor centers. The word motor
made me feel like a sick automobile. I begged to keep my clothes on; I
insisted; I promised to come to-morrow; but it wasn't any good, and in a
few minutes he was hitting me harder than either of the two before.
Maybe I was more tender! He electrocuted me extra from a switchboard,
ran red-hot needles into my legs, and finally, after banging me around
the room, said I was the strongest and wellest man who had ever entered
his office.

"There's a lot of make-believe in medicine," he said; "but I'm one of
those poor devils who can't help telling a patient the truth. There's
nothing whatever the matter with you, Mr. Westoby, except that your skin
has a slightly abrased look, and I seem to notice an abnormal
sensitiveness to touch."

"Were you ever in Colorado, Doctor?" I asked while he was good enough to
help me into my shirt.

"Oh, yes, I know Colorado well!"

My heart beat high.

"Some friends of mine were out there three years ago," I said. "Wouldn't
it be strange if by any chance the Van Coorts--"

"Oh, I left Denver when I was fifteen."

Five dollars!

The fifteenth Jones was a doctor of divinity; the sixteenth was a
tapeworm specialist; the seventeenth was too old, the eighteenth was too
old, the nineteenth was too old--a trio of disappointing patriarchs. The
twentieth painted out