Even the
note, with its darkly suggestive offer of "good material" for me,
looked diabolically significant. What might not an intelligent
lawyer make of it?
I tore it up instantly, and with feverish courtesy begged him to be
seated.
"You don't care to feel it?" he asked, a little anxiously.
"No."
"Nor see it?"
"No."
He sighed, a trifle sadly, as if I had rejected the only favor he
could bestow. I saw at once that he had been under frequent
exhibition to the doctors, and that he was, perhaps, a trifle vain
of this attention. This perception was corroborated a moment later
by his producing a copy of a medical magazine, with a remark that
on the sixth page I would find a full statement of his case.
"Could I serve him in any way?" I asked.
It appeared that I could. If I could help him to any light
employment, something that did not require any great physical
exertion or mental excitement, he would be thankful. But he wanted
me to understand that he was not, strictly speaking, a poor man;
that some years before the discovery of his fatal complaint he had
taken out a life insurance policy for five thousand dollars, and
that he had raked and scraped enough together to pay it up, and
that he would not leave his wife and four children destitute.
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