"I should say it has!" agreed Wallingford. "The drug-stores sell it to temperance people by the case, and in the dry states you'll find every back yard littered with empty Hawkins' Bitters bottles." A half-dozen entertaining stories of the kind Wallingford told his guest, and by the time he was through Doctor Lazzier began himself to have large visions of enormous profits to be made in the patent medicine business. Somehow, the very waistcoat of young J. Rufus seemed, in its breadth and gorgeousness, a guarantee of enormous profits, no matter what business he discussed. But the doctor's very last remark was upon the sacredness of medical ethics! When he was gone there was a conspicuous silence between Wallingford and his wife for a few minutes, and then she asked: "Jim, are you actually going to start a patent medicine company?" "Certainly I am," he replied. "And will Doctor Lazzier take stock in it?" "He certainly will," he assured her. "I figure him for from ten to twenty-five thousand." CHAPTER XXV IN WHICH WALLINGFORD ORGANIZES THE DOCTOR QUAGG PEERLESS SCIATACATA COMPANY At the Benson House J. Rufus found Doctor Quagg with a leg propped up on a chair, and himself in a state of profound profanity. "What's the matter, Doc?" asked Wallingford. "Sciatic rheumatism!" howled the martyr. "It's gettin' worse every year. Every time I go on the street for a night I know I'm goin' to suffer. That's why I keep it up so late and spiel myself hoarse in the neck. I jumped into town just yesterday and got a reader from these city hall pirates. They charged me twenty-five iron men for my license for the week. I go out and make one pitch, and that's all I get for my twenty-five." "Sciatic rheumatism's a tough dose," commiserated Wallingford. "Why don't you take five or six bottles of the Peerless Sciatacata?" The answer to this was a storm of fervid expletives which needed no diagram. Wallingford, chuckling, sat down and gloated over the doctor's misery, lighting a big, fat cigar to gloat at better ease. He offered a cigar to Quagg. "I daresn't smoke," swore that invalid. "And I suppose you daresn't drink, either," observed Wallingford. "Well, that doesn't stop me, you know." Wearily the doctor indicated a push-button. "You'll have to ring for a boy yourself," said he. When the boy came Wallingford ordered a highball. "And what's yours, sir?" asked the boy, turning to the doctor. "Lithia, you bullet-headed nigger!" roared the doctor with a twinge of pain in his leg. "That's twice to-day I've had to tell you I can't drink anything but lithia. Get out!" The boy "got," grinning. "Seriously, though, old man," said Wallingford, judging that the doctor had been aggravated long enough, "your condition must be very bad for business, and I've come to make you a proposition to go into the manufacture of the Peerless on a large scale." The doctor sat in silence for a moment, shaking his head despondently.