Green Doors

"Hello! What's up with you?"

Doctor Lewis Pryne was obviously surprised at the intrusion of a mere friend on office hours. "How did you persuade Miss Frazier to bring you in? You aren't—or are you—looking for a doctor?"

Dick Wilder's smile was tinged with awed diffidence.

"No, I'm not wanting treatment myself," he said. "All the same, I did get a regulation appointment from your secretary via the telephone, and I've been out there in your reception office meekly waiting my turn for hours. But first I have a message for you, from Cynthia. They want you for the week-end in Meadowbrook. Harry's counting on golf with you, and the children—"

Lewis broke in dryly. "Sorry, Dick, but I'm most frightfully busy just now. If you insist on staying to chat, I'll send you a bill—regulation fee for a first appointment. But if you vanish at once, I'll let you off. Give my fondest love to Cynthia, tell her I'll call her up; thanks, good-by."

But though the doctor rose, his visitor sat. "You're 4 hard, Lewis, hard," he murmured. "But it's all right with me. I expect a bill. I'm here to offer you a lovely new patient on a silver platter. It is rather—ah—private, though."

His embarrassment was due plainly to the presence of the secretary, Miss Frazier. She had escorted him into the presence of the famous psychiatrist and she was now hovering near the door on tiptoes, it seemed, to escort him out again.

Lewis sighed, but with good nature. "Miss Frazier needn't bother you," he explained. "She is my confidential secretary and it saves time having her here to make a record as we go along. How many people are out there, Miss Frazier?"

"Only two, Doctor. Mrs. Dickerman and—"...