Maybe
there was something the matter with him, and he ought to crawl out
and get himself taken care of. All of a sudden Peter remembered his
stomach; and his wits, which had been sharpened by twenty years'
struggle against a hostile world, realized in a flash the
opportunity which fate had brought to him. He must pretend to be
wounded, badly wounded; he must be unconscious, suffering from shock
and shattered nerves; then they would take him to the hospital and
put him in a soft bed and give him things to eat--maybe he might
stay there for weeks, and they might give him money when he came
out.
Or perhaps he might get a job in the hospital, something that was
easy, and required only alert intelligence. Perhaps the head doctor
in the hospital might want somebody to watch the other doctors, to
see if they were neglecting the patients, or perhaps flirting with
some of the nurses--there was sure to be something like that going
on. It had been that way in the orphans' home where Peter had spent
a part of his childhood till he ran away. It had been that way again
in the great Temple of Jimjambo, conducted by Pashtian el Kalandra,
Chief Magistrian of Eleutherinian Exoticism. Peter had worked as
scullion in the kitchen in that mystic institution, and had worked
his way upward until he possessed the confidence of Tushbar Akrogas,
major-domo and right hand man of the Prophet himself.
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