There was quietude for a few moments and then more deliberate effort. With his unaffected leg and arm, the victim of physical circumstances he could not explain worked himself around as if upon a pivot until the preponderance of his weight was outside the bed. Then, with vast caution, he tilted himself upward gently until he found himself sitting upon the bed's edge, his feet just touching the floor, and the crippled member refusing to bear weight. Markham bore down upon the right foot. It was stiff and seemed as if it would break before it bent, while the pain was exquisite, but the man could not stay where he was. He got down upon the floor and crawled toward his clothing. He contrived, somehow, to dress himself, but the task accomplished, his face was pallid and he was wet with perspiration. He tilted himself to his feet and creeping along by the wall, reached the elevator and so finally the office floor. There was a tinkle of glasses in the hotel saloon, and through the open door came the fragrance of mint and pineapple. There was a white-clad, wax-mustached man behind the bar in there, who, as Markham knew, could make a morning cocktail "to raise the dead," and not to raise them stark and rigid, like the bodies in Dora's "Judgment Day," but flexile and full of life. "Jack could mix me something that would help," he thought, and turned instinctively, but checked himself. More than a year had passed since he had tasted a morning cocktail. There had been a promise in the way. He looked down at his knee and foot. "Let them twist," he said, and then called for a cab. He did not like to do it; it was a confession of weakness, but in his own apartments again, and in bed as the only restful place, Markham sent for a doctor. The doctor came, not the ponderous old practitioner of the conventional type called for by a knowing man, but one of the better modern type, educated, a man of the world, canny with Scotch blood, but progressive and with the experimental tendency progressive men exhibit. Markham told what manner of cup had been put to his lips. "What's the matter with me!" he demanded. "Muscular rheumatism." "And what are you going to do about it?" "Oh, I'll follow the custom of the profession and make you a prescription." "And about the effect?" "Possibly it will help you." "Just at a casual estimate, how long am I to be crippled?" "That depends." "Depends on what?" The doctor laughed. "There's a difference in rheumatism--and in men. If you don't mind, I'll reserve my answer for a day or two." Markham growled. The doctor went away after writing upon a bit of paper these hieroglyphics: [Handwriting: illegible prescription]