"That's about it. Well, my yarn runs about this way." With the skill of an artist and the sympathy of a humanist--and the suppressed excitement of one who has something at stake--Peter drew his two principal characters, the conscientious, sensitive doctor possessed with the constant fear of that hypothetical case he might lose some day, and the smooth, scheming man a few years his senior who wanted to get his fellow-practitioner out of the way and marry the girl they both loved. Peter made the girl as adorable as a man in love might picture her. "For a sixpence I'd wager you had fallen in love yourself." Doctor Dempsy chuckled again. "I never before knew you to be so keen over feminine charms." "Just more copy," and Peter went on with the tale. "Well, the young chap's horror and fear kept growing with each new case, and the other chap kept sneering and suggesting that his nerves weren't fit, and his hand wasn't steady, and he worked too slowly. He kept it up until he got what he wanted; the young chap bungled his operation and lost his case." "Poor devil! I know just what kind of torment he lived through." Doctor Dempsy raised himself on an elbow and shook his head at Peter. "A case like that may be fiction to you, but it's fact to us in the profession. You have no idea how often a youngster's nerves fail him." "Guess I'm getting the idea. But I need your help to finish the yarn. Of course the hospital couldn't bounce him for losing one case. They would have to prove first that he wasn't fit, wouldn't they?" "They would have to make him out incompetent." Peter nodded. Had there been more light in the room Doctor Dempsy might have been startled at the unprecedented expression of cunning that had crept into his friend's face. "I'm not up enough in medical matters to know what I could prove against the young chap to put him out. You'll have to help me. Just how could his rival oust him?" "Accuse him of drugs," came the unhesitating answer. "That's the most plausible, and it's what plays havoc with young surgeons quicker than anything else. They feel their nerves going, and they take a hypodermic; it steadies them until--it gets them. If you can make your villain convince the staff that drugs are back of the lost case, you can get your poor devil of a surgeon permanently disposed of." Peter let out a long-drawn breath. "Thank you, Doc. You've helped me out--considerably." It does not in the least matter how Peter finished the tale. Before the inevitable conclusion Doctor Dempsy dropped off to sleep, and no one but Peter himself heard the final, "And they married and lived happy ever after. By Jupiter they did!"