dmost. So you will give me
what they used to call my _coup de grace_. You'll just stab me dead as I
lie dying. Well, in a fortnight's time you can go."

The other rose. "Thank you very much, Mr. Sypher. You have always treated
me generously, and I'm more than sorry to leave you. You bear me no ill
will?"

"For going from one quack remedy to another? Certainly not."

It was only when the door closed behind the manager that Sypher relaxed his
attitude. He put both hands up to his face, and then fell forward on to the
desk, his head on his arms.

The end had come. To that which mattered in the man, the lingering faith
yet struggling in the throes of dissolution, Shuttleworth had indeed given
the _coup de grace_. That he had joined the arch-enemy who in a short time
would achieve his material destruction signified little. When something
spiritual is being done to death, the body and mind are torpid. Even a
month ago, had Shuttleworth uttered such blasphemy within those walls Clem
Sypher would have arisen in his wrath like a mad crusader and have cloven
the blasphemer from skull to chine. To-day, he had sat motionless,
petrified, scarcely able to feel. He knew that the man spoke truth. As well
put any noxious concoction of drugs on the market and call it a specific
against obesity or gravel or deafness as Sypher's Cure. Between the
heaven-sent panacea which was to cleanse the skin of the nations and send
his name ringing down the centuries as the Friend of Humanity and the
shiveringly vulgar Jebusa Jones's Cuticle Remedy there was not an atom of
important difference. One was as useful or as useless as the other. The
Cure was pale green; the Remedy rose pink. Women liked the latter best on
account of its color. Both were quack medicaments.

He raised a drawn and agonized face and looked around the familiar room,
where so many gigantic schemes had been laid, where so many hopes had shone
radiant, and saw for the first time its blatant self-complacency, its
piteous vulgarity. Facing him was the artist's original cartoon for the
great poster which once had been famous all over the world, and now, for
lack of money, only lingered in shreds on a forgotten hoarding in some Back
of Beyond. It represented the Friend of Humanity, in gesture, white beard,
and general appearance resembling a benevolent minor prophet, distributing
the Cure to a scrofulous universe. In those glorified days, he had striven
to have his own lineaments de