Part 31 (1/2)
”By the Living Tinker, and that's the fourth! Where d'you think I'd give a cool fifty to be this minute? Not cooling my heels in a brick-paved pa.s.sage while a pack of doctors are swoppin' dog-Latin over the body of a moribund young parson, but on the roof of the Staff Quarters, lookin'
North, with my eyes glued to the binoculars and my ears p.r.i.c.ked for--you know what!”
Beauvayse groaned. ”Isn't that what I'm suffering for? And the Chief must be ten times worse. How he keeps his countenance--demure as my grandmother's cat lappin' cream.... I say, the Transvaal Dutch; they call themselves the true Children of Israel, don't they? Well, which did Moses and his little gang come across first in the Desert, the Pillar of Cloud, or the Pillar of Fire, or a couple of railway-trucks containin' the raw material for a sky-journey, only waitin' till Brer' Boer plugs a bullet in among the dynamite? It makes me feel good all over, as the American women say, when I think of it.” He smiled like a mischievous young archangel, masquerading in Service kit.
Within the room the fainting man was coming back to consciousness, his dry, rattling breaths bearing out Captain Bingo Wrynche's similitude regarding husks and shavings, rings of blue fire swimming before his darkened vision, and a dull roaring in his ears.... The Royal Army Medical Corps wrought over him; the nurse lent a deft helping hand; the Resident Surgeon talked eagerly to the Colonel; and he, lending ear, scarcely heard the reiterated, stereotyped parrot-phrases, so taken up was his attention with the man in shabby white drill clothes, who leaned over the foot of the bed, his square face set into an expressionless mask, his gentian-blue, oddly vivid eyes fixed upon the wasted, waxy-yellow face of the sick man, his head bent, as he listened with profound, absorbed attention to the husky, rattling, laboured breaths.
Suddenly he straightened himself and spoke, addressing himself to the Resident Surgeon.
”The patient has told us, sir, that he is suffering from tuberculous disease of the lungs. May I ask, was that the conclusion arrived at by a London consulting physician, and whether your own diagnosis has confirmed the a.s.sertion?”
The Resident Surgeon nodded with patronising indifference. He was not going to waste civilities upon this rowdy, drunken remittance-man, whom he had seen reeling through the streets of the stad as he went upon his own respectable way.
”_Phthisis pulmonalis._” He addressed his reply to the Chief. ”And the process of lung-destruction is, as you will observe, sir, nearly complete.”
He encountered from the Chief a look of cool displeasure that flushed him to the top of his k.n.o.bby forehead, and set him blinking nervously behind his big round spectacles.
”Dr. Saxham asked you, sir, unless I mistake, whether you had ascertained by your own diagnosis, the ...” Lady Hannah's words came back to him. He recalled the ”bit of information wormed out of the nurse,” and ended with ”the presence of the bacillus?”
Saxham's blue eyes thrust their rapier-points at him, and then plunged into the oyster-like orbs behind the spectacles of the Resident Surgeon, who rapidly grew from scarlet to purple, and from purple to pale green.
Major Taggart and the Irishman exchanged a look of intelligence.
”Koch's bacillus, sir, were this a case of tuberculosis proper, would be present in the expectoration of the patient, and easy of demonstration under the microscope.” Saxham's voice was cold as ice and cutting as tempered steel. ”May we take it that you can personally testify to its presence here?” He pointed to the bed.
”And varra possibly,” put in Taggart, ”ye could submit a culture for present inspection? It would be gratifeeying to me and Captain McFadyen here, as weel as to our friend an' colleague Dr. Saxham, late of St.
Stephen's-in-the-West, London, to varrafy the correctness o' your diagnosis.”
”And it would that!” the Irishman chimed in. ”So trot out your bacillus, by all manner of means!”
The Resident Surgeon babbled something incoherent, and melted out of the room.
”Moppin' his head as he goes down the pa.s.sage,” said McFadyen, coming back from the door.
”He'll no be in sic a sweatin' hurry to come back,” p.r.o.nounced the canny Scot, shedding a wink from a dry, red-fringed eyelid. He produced from the roomy breast-pocket of his khaki Service jacket a rubber-tubed stethoscope, and put it silently into the hand Saxham had mechanically stretched out for it. Then he drew back, his eyes, like those of the other two spectators of the strange scene that was beginning, fixed upon the chief actor in it. One other, weak after his swoon as a new-born child, lay pa.s.sively, helplessly upon the bed.
Saxham, his square face stony and set, moved with a noiseless, feline, padding step towards the p.r.o.ne victim. A gleam of apprehension shot into Julius Fraithorn's great dark eyes, reopening now to consciousness. They fixed themselves, with an instinct born of that sudden thrill of fear, upon the lightly-closed right hand. Instantly comprehending, Saxham lifted the hand, showed that it held no instrument save the stethoscope, and dropped it again by his side, drawing nearer. Then the ma.s.sive, close-cropped black head sank to the level of Julius Fraithorn's breast, revealed in its ghastly, emaciated nakedness by the open nights.h.i.+rt. The ma.s.sive shoulders bowed, the supple body curved, the keen ear joined itself to the heaving surface. In a moment more the agonising, hacking, rending cough came on. Julius battled for air. Raising him deftly and tenderly, Saxham signed to the nurse, who hurried to him, answering his low questions in whispers, giving aid where he indicated it required.
Steadily, patiently, the binaural stethoscope travelled over the lung area, gathering abnormal sounds, searching for silent s.p.a.ces, sucking evidence into the a.s.similative brain behind the eyes that saw nothing but the man upon the bed, the locked human casket housing the secret that was slowly, surely coming to light. In the fierce determination to gain it, he threw the stethoscope away, and glued his avid ear to the man again.
”Toch! but I wouldna' have missed this for a kittie o' Kruger sovereigns!”
the Chief Medical Officer whispered to his colleague from Meath. And McFadyen whispered back:
”Nor me, for your shoes. 'Ss.h.!.+”
Saxham was lifting up the great stooping shoulders, and beginning to speak in a voice totally different from that of the man known in Gueldersdorp as the Dop Doctor. Clear, ringing, concise, the sentences left his lips:
”Gentlemen, I invite your attention to a case of involuntary simulation of the symptoms distinguis.h.i.+ng pulmonary tuberculosis by a patient suffering from a grave disease of totally different and possibly much less malignant character. Oblige me by stepping nearer!”
They crowded about the bed like eager students.
”In order to show what false conclusions loose modes of reasoning and the habitual reliance upon precedent may lead to, take the instance of the consulting physician to whom some years ago this young man, now barely thirty, and reduced, as you may see for yourselves, to the final extremity of physical decline, resorted.”