Part 2

"Honorable Doctors," I began self-consciously, "you all realize the legal difficulties with which we are faced. Before we face them, I give you the suggestion that we prevail upon the inventor of the Symptometer to license its manufacture for use only in medical clinics. Having operated the machines I can testify that the results of the questioning of these devices can be definitely informational and could assist a physician in more rapid diagnosis and treatment."

I held up my hand to silence the horrified grunts of disapproval. "Let me continue, please. A few minor changes in the recording mechanism would enable the equipment to produce a coded card. This, without a physician's attention, would direct the clinical staff to perform the necessary laboratory functions to verify or disprove the indicated symptoms. With this card and the results of the clinical examination in his possession, the physician then meets the patient for the first time. He has been spared the preliminary examination, the redundant, lengthy interview in which madame hypochondriac recapitulates the history of her hives or biliousness.

"Naturally, the coin operation of the machine would be eliminated. But there is no need for a doctor to adjust his fees downward because he performs his work more efficiently, now is there? And with the Symptometer at his disposal, a physician should be able to easily double the number of office calls per hour.

"What does this do for the doctor? It frees him from so much of the annoying drudgery of patient interviewing. It eliminates the wait from first interview to final consultation. It keeps the laboratory details in their proper place. In short, it makes a true executive of the physician."

My eloquence was beginning to tell. All these men had long practices behind them. The practical advantages were undeniable. The important point, however, was that my radical suggestion did offer a less distressing alternative to bringing this into court.

The gray-fringed bald heads bobbled before me, and I knew from the higher pitch of their grunts and mutters that I was making my point. I was sweating, but then so were they.

* * * * *

That evening I phoned Cunningham. "You're in like Flynn," I told him. "Whether you like it or not, get those machines back and the changes made within a week. If we give them too much time to think about it they might change their minds."

I thought I caught laughter in the background, but I hadn't made a video connection. I did so at once, and there was Cunningham with a suspiciously smug smirk on his face. "Thanks, old man," he said softly.

"Wait a minute," I interrupted. "I thought you were reluctant about this idea?"

A babble of feminine voices and a background blur on the visor distracted him from my words. He turned away, then back to the screen. "Sue is on her way over to your suite to pick you up. Tonight we celebrate. My girl friends are here. Gotta go now."

The idea of a party just then was repugnant, but the thought of another cross-town ride with Sue was not. As I dressed I achieved an almost gala mood.

It persisted until I was beside Sue again, same car, same tunnel, same Spring in Brooklyn, but the Blueboids went fluttering when I identified the same smug smirk on her face that John Cunningham had betrayed a half hour ago.

"What," I demanded, "have you invented now?" She looked long into my eyes, and the amused look slowly left her. She leaned over to me.

With a perversity I was growing to hate I refused to accept this perfectly good answer. "I sold your Symptometer to the Board, but I want you to know," I told her loftily, "that I'm not subscribing to your fantastic general diagnoser."

"Nooooo?" she said softly. She kept looking up into my eyes in a way, I am told, that women have of concentrating while pretending to listen.

"It's absurd," I pointed out. "Why, he needs five years just to calibrate the thing. It has no possibilities of mass-production. And even if it did, the cost would be so outrageous that the average hospital could hire a whole staff of physicians for the price of one machine. And figure one thing more: What medical man would welcome into his heart a gadget that would leave him nothing to do but stand around with a voltmeter and an oilcan?"

"Good point," Sue nodded with an exaggerated flounce of her auburn halo.

"Of course," I conceded, "if John wants to fiddle around with that pile of junk as a hobby, that's his business."

"Darrrrrrrling, you've been had," she said lazily. "That pile of junk we told you was a super-gadget was nothing more than an assembly jig and test rack for the Symptometer units."

"You misled me!" I exploded.

"That is the understatement of the week," she smiled sweetly. "But we couldn't have chosen a better Symptometer salesman if we'd had our pick when I phoned in that complaint to the Board and the Hotel Celt."

"You--you?" I stammered, my pulse loud in my ears.

"Yes, darling. And you were so sweet to get the solution so quickly. We didn't even have to suggest it to you." Somehow her arm had crept up behind me, and her fingers got inside the back of my over-heated collar. "Don't you understand? With John's trouble, what chance do you suppose he would have had peddling those gadgets directly to any clinic? Anyway, what product ever started out in life with a better endorsement than that of the International Medical Association? Now SHEDDUP!"

I could have resisted the pressure of her arm, being a strong man. But a bega-volt thought hit me. She had everything out of me she had come for, so why did she want to kiss me unless--anyhow, we hit the tunnel curve just then.

Once again I didn't notice the warning signal light. And this time we got a ticket.