early. Then Dane found Michael, and asked him to get a message to Doctor Steele to come to him there. When the physician arrived he took him upstairs to the room he always occupied when he spent nights in the hotel.
The doctor sat down on the one chair and waited. Dane walked to the window, where he stared out a moment. Then he turned back and looked down at the other man.
“Doc, do you know much about cancer?” he asked quietly.
The gloomy brown eyes did not change their expression as they looked up at him.
“I wouldn’t call myself an expert. I wouldn’t operate. Why do you ask?”
“My father died of cancer in the stomach. I’ve been wondering for some time if that is what I have.”
There was a dead silence for a few seconds. Then the doctor spoke in his low monotonous manner.
“Cancer is hardly a thing to go wondering about. And there’s a theory now that it is not hereditary. It may only be indigestion.” He asked him several questions which Dane answered in a hard detached tone.
“It looks bad, Barrington, but really, it may only be indigestion.”
“That’s what I’ve preferred to think, Doc. I’ve shirked finding out. But I’ve got to know now.”
“Go at once to Alleyne, and get him to make the tests. If it is that, he’s the best man to operate, none better in the colonies. You mustn’t let it go on.”
“I guess ‘letting’ has nothing to do with it, Doc,” said Dane with a twisted smile. “There is an inevitability about cancer, a damnable inevitability. It’s that I don’t like. I resent it. God! what a rottenly feeble thing a man is! Limited by his stomach! Regulated by
