carried him to Constantinople. "As soon as I get back to a civilized
sewage system I shall be myself again. These Eastern towns are all right
for Orientals; and what is your Muscovite but an Oriental, in all
essentials of hygiene? But they play the deuce with a European who has
grown up in a country where people still indulge in a sense of smell."

And if anyone ventured to sympathize with him, or to express regret at
his illness, he would snub him fiercely. But for all that he felt
convinced, in his own mind, that he had been attacked by some fatal
disease. He became melancholy and depressed; and, if he did not spend his
days in drawing up his last will and testament, it was because such a
proceeding--in view of the state of his banking account--would have
partaken of the nature of a farce. Having a sense of humour, he was
little disposed, just then, to any action whose comic side he could not
conveniently ignore.

When he arrived in London, however, he was relieved to find that the
specialists whom he consulted, while they mostly gave him his money's
worth of polite interest, did not display any anxiety as to his
condition. One of them, indeed, went so far as to mention a long name,
and to suggest that an operation for appendicitis would be likely to do
no harm; but, on being cross-examined, confessed that he saw no reason to
suspect anything wrong with Sir Arthur's appendix; so that the young man
left the consulting-room in some indignation.

He remembered, as soon as the door had closed behind him, that he had
forgotten to ask the meaning of the long name; and, being reluctant to
set eyes again on the doctor who had mystified him with it, went to
another and demanded to know what such a term might signify.