's an open secret
among all who knew him. If he died at forty-five, he crammed eighty
years into it. The marvel was that he could have held on so long at
the pace at which he was going. But he took it beautifully when it
came.

"I was his clinical assistant at the time. Walker was lecturing on
locomotor ataxia to a wardful of youngsters. He was explaining that
one of the early signs of the complaint was that the patient could not
put his heels together with his eyes shut without staggering. As he
spoke, he suited the action to the word. I don't suppose the boys
noticed anything. I did, and so did he, though he finished his lecture
without a sign.

"When it was over he came into my room and lit a cigarette.

"'Just run over my reflexes, Smith,' said he.

"There was hardly a trace of them left. I tapped away at his
knee-tendon and might as well have tried to get a jerk out of that
sofa-cushion. He stood with his eyes shut again, and he swayed like a
bush in the wind.

"'So,' said he, 'it was not intercostal neuralgia after all.'

"Then I knew that he had had the lightning pains, and that the case was
complete. There was nothing to say, so I sat looking at him while he
puffed and puffed at his cigarette. Here he was, a man in the prime of
life, one of the handsomest men in London, with money, fame, social
success, everything at his feet, and now, without a moment's warning,
he was told that inevitable death lay before him, a death accompanied
by more refined and lingering tortures than if he were bound upon a Red
Indian stake. He sat in the middle of the blue cigarette cloud with
his eyes cast down, and the slightest little tightening of his lips.
Then he rose with a motion of his arms, as one who throws off old
thoughts and enters upon a new course.

"'Better put this thing straight at once,' said he. 'I must make some
fresh arrangements. May I use your paper and envelopes?'

"He settled himself at my desk and he wrote half a dozen letters. It
is not a breach of confidence to say that they were not addressed to
his professional brothers. Walker was a single man, which means that
he was not restricted to a single woman. When he had finished, he
walked out of that little room of mine, leaving every hope and ambition
of his life behind him. And he might have had another year of
ignorance and peace if it had not been for the chance illustration in
his lecture.

"It took five years to kill him, a