Just before daybreak the next morning Dr. Helberson and his young
friend Harper were driving slowly through the streets of North Beach in
the doctor's coupé.
"Have you still the confidence of youth in the courage or stolidity of
your friend?" said the elder man. "Do you believe that I have lost this
wager?"
"I _know_ you have," replied the other, with enfeebling emphasis.
"Well, upon my soul, I hope so."
It was spoken earnestly, almost solemnly. There was a silence for a few
moments.
"Harper," the doctor resumed, looking very serious in the shifting
half-lights that entered the carriage as they passed the street lamps,
"I don't feel altogether comfortable about this business. If your friend
had not irritated me by the contemptuous manner in which he treated my
doubt of his endurance--a purely physical quality--and by the cool
incivility of his suggestion that the corpse be that of a physician, I
should not have gone on with it. If anything should happen we are
ruined, as I fear we deserve to be."
"What can happen? Even if the matter should be taking a serious turn, of
which I am not at all afraid, Mancher has only to 'resurrect' himself
and explain matters. With a genuine 'subject' from the dissecting-room,
or one of your late patients, it might be different."