"
"Now, why mustn't you?" asked Thorndyke. "Why is a subject in which we
are all keenly interested to be _tabu_? You don't mind telling us about
it, do you?"
"No, of course not. But what do you think of a man who buttonholes a
doctor at a dinner-party to retail a list of his ailments?"
"It depends on what his ailments are," replied Thorndyke. "If he is a
chronic dyspeptic and wishes to expound the virtues of Doctor Snaffler's
Purple Pills for Pimply People, he is merely a bore. But if he chances
to suffer from some rare and choice disease, such as Trypanosomiasis or
Acromegaly, the doctor will be delighted to listen."
"Then are we to understand," Miss Bellingham asked, "that we are rare
and choice products, in a legal sense?"
"Undoubtedly," replied Thorndyke. "The case of John Bellingham is, in
many respects, unique. It will be followed with the deepest interest by
the profession at large, and especially by medical jurists."
"How gratifying that should be to us!" said Miss Bellingham. "We may
even attain undying fame in textbooks and treatises; and yet we are not
so very much puffed up with our importance.
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