finished"; and I began
to gather up the fruits of my two-days' toil into something like
order.

He shut the door and came across to where I was sitting. "Do you mean
you have made out the full list of what you want?" he asked, picking
up one of the sheets and running his eye rapidly over the notes and
calculations.

"I have done it all in the rough," I replied, "except the drawing of
the shed. That will only take an hour or so."

"Excellent," he exclaimed. "I can see there won't be much time wasted
when we once get to work." Then he laid down the paper. "Tomorrow
morning I propose trying the first of our little operations. Savaroff
has brought me the things I needed, and I think we can finish the
whole business in a couple of days."

"What part of me are you going to start on?" I inquired with some
interest.

"I think I shall alter the shape of your nose first," he said. "It's
practically a painless operation--just one injection of hot paraffin
wax under the skin. After that you have only to keep quiet for a
couple of hours so that the wax can set in the right shape."

"What about the X-ray treatment?" I asked.

He shrugged his shoulders. "That's perfectly simple too. Merely a
matter of covering up everything except the part that we want exposed.
One uses a specially prepared sort of lead sheeting. There is
absolutely no danger or difficulty about it."

I thought at first that he might be purposely minimizing both
operations in order to put me at my ease, but as it turned out he was
telling me nothing except the literal truth.

At half-past ten the next morning he came up to my room with Sonia in
attendance, the latter carrying a Primus stove and a small black bag.

At his own suggestion I had stayed in bed, and from between the sheets
I viewed their entrance not without a certain whimsical feeling of
regret. When one has had a nose of a particular shape for the best
part of thirty years it is rather a wrench to feel that one is
abandoning it for a stranger. I passed my fingers down it almost
affectionately.

McMurtrie, who appeared to be in the best of spirits, wished me
good-morning in that silkily polite manner of his which I was getting
to dislike more and more. Sonia said nothing. She simply put the
things down on the table by my bedside, and then stood there with
the air of sullen hostility which she seemed generally to wear in
McMurtrie's presence.

"I feel rather like a gladiator," I said. "Mori