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I'll give you lunch there.'
    'Excellent.'
    'I'll come in the car, so bring your things. Then we can start straight off for Blandings afterwards.'
    'Blandings?'
    'I'd like to get there for dinner.'
    'Blandings,' said Mr Plimsoll. 'Of course, yes, Blandings. I knew there was something I wanted to tell you. I'm not coming to Blandings.'
    It was not easy to make Freddie Threepwood shake like an aspen. Usually, in order to shatter his iron composure, you had to praise Peterson's Pup Food in his hearing. But he shook now perceptibly and just like an aspen.
    'What!'
    'No. Where's the sense in burying myself in the country when I'm feeling so extraordinarily well? The whole point of the scheme, if you remember, was that I should go there and tone up my system by breathing pure air. But now that it's gone and toned itself up, I don't need pure air. In fact, I'd rather not have it.'
    'But, Tippy ...'
    'It's off,' said Mr Plimsoll firmly. 'We wash the project out. This other idea of yours, however, of standing me a bite of lunch, strikes me as admirable. I'll come dashing up, all fire and ginger. You'll know me by the rosy cheeks. I really am feeling astoundingly well. It's what I've always said – alcohol's a tonic. Where most fellows go wrong is that they don't take enough of it. Twelve o'clock at the what's-its-name. Good. Right. Fine. Swell. Capital. Excellent. Splendid,' said Mr Plimsoll, and rang off.
    For some moments Freddie stood motionless. This shattering blow to his hopes and dreams had temporarily stunned him. He toyed with the idea of calling the other back and reasoning with him. Then he reflected that this could be better done quietly and at one's leisure across the luncheon table. He lit a cigarette, and there came into his face a look of stern determination. Donaldson's Inc. trains its vice-presidents well. They may be down, but they are never out.
    As for Mr Plimsoll, he picked up hat and umbrella, balanced the latter buoyantly on his chin for an instant, then went out and rang for the elevator. A few minutes later he was being assisted into a taxi by the ex-King of Ruritania who patrolled the sidewalk in front of the main entrance.
    'Harley Street,' he said to the driver. 'And don't spare the horses.'
    Harley Street, as everybody knows, is where medical men collect in gangs, and almost every door you see has burst out into a sort of eczema of brass plates. At a house about half-way down the thoroughfare the following members of the healing profession had elected to mess in together: Hartley Rampling, P. P. Borstal, G. V. Cheesewright, Sir Abercrombie Fitch-Fitch, and E. Jimpson Murgatroyd. The one Tipton was after was E. Jimpson Murgatroyd.

CHAPTER 3
    The great drawback to choosing a doctor at random out of the telephone directory just because you like his middle name – Tipton had once been engaged to a girl called Doris Jimpson – is that until you are in his consulting room and it is too late to back out, you don't know what you are going to get. It may be a kindred soul, or it may be someone utterly alien and unsympathetic. You are taking a leap in the dark.
    The moment Tipton set eyes on E. Jimpson Murgatroyd he knew that he had picked a lemon in the garden of medicine. What he had hoped for was a sunny practitioner who would prod him in the ribs with his stethoscope, compliment him on his amazing health, tell him an anecdote about a couple of Irishmen named Pat and Mike, give him some sort of ointment for the spots, and send him away in a whirl of good-fellowship. And E. Jimpson proved to be a gloomy man with side whiskers, who smelled of iodoform and had obviously been looking on the black side of things since he was a slip of a boy.
    Seeming not in the least impressed by Tipton's extraordinary fitness, he had asked him in a low, despondent voice to take a seat and show him his spots. And when he had seen them he shook his head and said he didn't like those spots. Tipton said he didn't like them either –