Grogarty said. 'That's not all you haven't been doing, either.'

The door at the opposite end of the room opened and J. Robespierre O'Reilly and His Royal Highness the Sheikh of Abzug, together with two of His Highness' bodyguards, walked into the room.

'Sorry to be late,' J. Robespierre O'Reilly said, 'but pumpkin always likes me to stay backstage until she goes on.'

'Sit down, Radar,' Dr. Grogarty said, 'and shut up and deal.' He turned to Dr. Sattyn-Whiley. 'Take his pulse, Cornie,' said Dr. Grogarty, indicating His Royal Highness,

 

'and give him one of these.' He threw Dr. Sattyn-Whiley a Tums for the tummy. 'That way you can truthfully tell your mother that you were summoned to treat His Royal Highness for stomach distress.'

 

His Royal Highness seemed a little confused about having his wrist held and being given the foil-wrapped medication. Radar explained what was going on. His Royal Highness reached up and pinched Dr. Sattyn-Whiley on the cheek.

'What's this ?' Dr. Sattyn-Whiley inquired.

'Oh, from the looks of it, about three carats,' Radar said. 'The one he just gave Kris was a littie bigger.'

His Royal Highness sat down at the table.

'Deal the cards!' he said. 'His nibs is hot tonight!'

 

CHAPTER TWO

 

'Spruce Harbor Medical Center,' the switchboard operator of that medical facility said, after she had pushed the appropriate button.

 

'Dr. Aloysius J. Grogarty of the Grogarty Clinic for Dr. Benjamin Franklin Pierce,' a precise voice announced. 'And please stand by for the transmission of EKG and x-ray.'

Despite what some of its critics alleged, the Spruce Harbor Medical Center was a well-equipped institution, fully capable of both receiving and transmitting, via quite clever and very expensive machines, electro-cardiograms and x-ray photographs. It had, in fact, the very latest and most expensive equipment, which had been presented to the medical center some three months before by Mr. Wayne Lussey, chairman of the board of the Spruce Harbor Building Loan Association, as a small gesture of his affection and respect for Dr. Pierce, the Spruce Harbor chief of surgery, and all the other medical practitioners of the institution.

Mr. Lussey, who had attended a savings-and-loan chief executives' association convention in Mexico City while his wife was off on a three-month around-the-world tour, had returned with a little souvenir of the convention. It was not, however, the sort of souvenir that he would (or could) display on his mantelpiece to recall a happy moment in his life, and certainly not the sort of souvenir he would wish Mrs. Lussey to even hear about.

When his souvenir was first diagnosed by Dr. Pierce, in fact, Mr. Lussey was reluctant to admit that anything of that sort could possibly happen to him.

'Hawkeye,' he'd said, in high indignation, 'you don't mean it!'

'You are speaking, sir,' Dr. Pierce had replied, 'to the former social-disease-control officer of the 4077th Mobile Army Surgical Hospital, fondly remembered as the Double Natural MASH. I know a dose of —'

 

'Don't say it!' Mr.