Page:Weird Tales Volume 4 Number 3 (1924-11).djvu/57

{{rh|56|WEIRD TALES|} cases where rheumatism had disappeared. Tandy Williams had lost his, for instance. Where had it gone? George Washington's face became a puzzle, for he was unable to answer his own question, which he had propounded to Martha Washington with such finality. What if Martha should point to Tandy Williams as an example?

The smoke hung heavily over Chicago, and the smell of the stock yards, two miles away, lay like a blanket over the South Side. The heat weighed oppressively on George Washington, and he turned aside into the little park on Cottage Grove avenue near Thirty-fifth street, to solve the problem of where rheumatism goes when it disappears, before Martha Washington could vanquish him with his own argument.

The odor from the stock yards did not greatly distress him, for, truth to tell, he was used to it. But the prospect of being thrashed in an argument by Martha Washington was gall and wormwood to his proud spirit, for he believed firmly in the superiority of the masculine brain, and regarded man as the natural lord of creation. He dropped down, dispirited, on one of the benches which a kindly park commission allows to exist for the repose of wearied mortals, and proceeded to drink deep draughts of desperate thought. But the draughts were not cooling, for the day was hot, and his mind was not used to grappling with such tremendous problems.

Where, indeed, would his rheumatism go if it left him? Where could it go?

He lifted his eyes in distress. His gaze roved furtively over the little park, as if seeking an answer to his question. A passing Illinois Central train poured black smoke into his eyes, but this was hardly a drop in the infinite ocean of his misery. For he was about to be crushed by Martha Washington on the field of argument. It was too much.

Voices from the other bench (the park boasts of two) came to his ears. Having removed the cinders from his eye, he now removed his thumb, and looked irritably at the two speakers. But his irritation vanished immediately into thin air, and he forgot the cinders. There on the other bench, not fifteen feet away, was the man who could solve his problem for him, if anybody could. This was Dr. Elusha Jones, the most penetrating intellect (in George Washington's opinion) that had ever graced the South Side.

George had listened to him, awestruck, in several debates, and become a hero worshiper in the presence of that master mind. Why, only two weeks ago he had heard the doctor annihilate his adversary in a public debate as to whether baptism were absolutely essential to salvation, or whether it were merely an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual change. Dr. Jones had proved conclusively that without baptism there can be no inner change, and therefore the act itself, the application of the water, is necessary to the saving of the soul.

Having had this auricular proof of the surpassing power of the doctor's mentality, George Washington did not doubt that it would be but play for the gentleman to solve his problem of the ultimate destination of rheumatism when it leaves its abode in the human body. He would state his problem to the doctor, and return in triumph to Martha Washington with the solution.

Feeling much happier, now that he was about to prove to Martha the superiority of masculine brains over feminine, he slid softly to the other end of the bench, to be nearer Dr. Jones and his companion, and pick up any stray pearls