ospital that youre to come instantly--a patient on the point of
death. The carriage is waiting.

RIDGEON [intolerantly] Oh, nonsense: get out. [Greatly annoyed] What do
you mean by interrupting me like this?

REDPENNY. But--

RIDGEON. Chut! cant you see I'm engaged? Be off.

Redpenny, bewildered, vanishes.

MRS DUBEDAT [rising] Doctor: one instant only before you go--

RIDGEON. Sit down. It's nothing.

MRS DUBEDAT. But the patient. He said he was dying.

RIDGEON. Oh, he's dead by this time. Never mind. Sit down.

MRS DUBEDAT [sitting down and breaking down] Oh, you none of you care.
You see people die every day.

RIDGEON [petting her] Nonsense! it's nothing: I told him to come in and
say that. I thought I should want to get rid of you.

MRS DUBEDAT [shocked at the falsehood] Oh! RIDGEON [continuing] Dont
look so bewildered: theres nobody dying.

MRS DUBEDAT. My husband is.

RIDGEON [pulling himself together] Ah, yes: I had forgotten your
husband. Mrs Dubedat: you are asking me to do a very serious thing?

MRS DUBEDAT. I am asking you to save the life of a great man.

RIDGEON. You are asking me to kill another man for his sake; for as
surely as I undertake another case, I shall have to hand back one of
the old ones to the ordinary treatment. Well, I dont shrink from that. I
have had to do it before; and I will do it again if you can convince me
that his life is more important than the worst life I am now saving. But
you must convince me first.

MRS DUBEDAT. He made those drawings; and they are not the best--nothing
like the best; only I did not bring the really best: so few people like
them. He is twenty-three: his whole life is before him. Wont you let me
bring him to you? wont you speak to him? wont you see for yourself?

RIDGEON. Is he well enough to come to a dinner at the Star and Garter at
Richmond?

MRS DUBEDAT. Oh yes. Why?

RIDGEON. I'll tell you. I am inviting all my old friends to a dinner to
celebrate my knighthood--youve seen about it in the papers, havnt you?

MRS DUBEDAT. Yes, oh yes. That was how I found out about you.

RIDGEON. It will be a doctors' dinner; and it was to have been a
bachelors' dinner. I'm a bachelor. Now if you will entertain for me, and
bring your husband, he will meet me; and he will meet some of the most
eminent men in my profession: Sir Patrick Cullen, Sir Ralph Bloomfield
Bonington, Cutler Walpole, and others. I can put the case to them; and
your husband wi