Part 11 (1/2)

Two tiger skins lay on the floor. Dr. Gurnet was a most excellent shot.

He was too curious for fear, though he always a.s.serted that he disliked danger, and took every precaution to avoid it, excepting, of course, giving up the thing which he had set out to do. But it was a fact that his favorites among his patients were, as a rule, those who loved danger for its own sake without curiosity and without fear.

He saw at a glance that Winn belonged to this category. Names were like pocket electric lamps to Dr. Gurnet. He switched them on and off to illuminate the dark places of the earth. He held Winn's card in his hand and recalled that he had known a former colonel of his regiment.

”A very distinguished officer,” he remarked, ”of a very distinguished regiment. Probably perfectly unknown in England. England has a preference for worthless men while they live and a tenderness for them after they are dead unless corrected by other nations. It is an odd thing to me that men like Colonel Travers and yourself, for instance, care to give up your lives to an empire that is like a badly deranged stomach with a craving for unhealthy objects.”

”We haven't got to think about it,” said Winn. ”We keep the corner we are in quiet.”

”Yes,” said Dr. Gurnet sympathetically, ”I know; but I think it would be better if you had to think about it. Perhaps it wouldn't be necessary to keep things quiet if they were more thoroughly exposed to thought.”

Winn's attention wandered to the tiger skins.

”Did you bag those fellows yourself?” he asked. Dr. Gurnet smilingly agreed. After this Winn didn't so much mind having his chest examined.

But the examination of his chest, though a long and singularly thorough operation, seemed to Dr. Gurnet a mere bead strung on an extended necklace. He hadn't any idea, as the London specialist had had, that Winn could only have one organ and one interest. He came upon him with the effect of bouncing out from behind a screen with a series of funny, flat little questions. Sometimes Winn thought he was going to be angry with him, but he never was. There was a blithe impersonal touch in Dr.

Gurnet, a smiling willingness to look on private histories as of less importance than last year's newspapers. It was as if he airily explained to his patients that really they had better put any facts there were on the files, and let the housemaid use the rest for the kitchen fire; and he required very little on Winn's part. From a series of reluctant monosyllables he built up a picturesque and reliable structure of his new patient's life. They weren't by any means all physical questions. He wanted to know if Winn knew German. Winn said he didn't, and added that he didn't like Germans.

”Then you should take some pains to understand them,” observed Dr.

Gurnet. ”Not to understand the language of an enemy is the first step toward defeat. Why, it is even necessary sometimes to understand one's friends.”

Winn said that he had a friend he understood perfectly; his name was Lionel Drummond.

”I know him through and through,” he explained; ”that's why I trust him.” Dr. Gurnet looked interested, but not convinced.

”Ah,” he said, ”personally I shouldn't trust any man till he was dead.

You know where you are then, you know. Before that one prophesies. By the by, are you married?” Dr. Gurnet did not raise his eyes at this question, but before Winn's leaden ”Yes” had answered him he had written on the case paper, ”Unhappy domestic life.”

”And--er--your wife's not here with you?” Dr. Gurnet suavely continued.

Winn thought himself non-committal when he confined himself to saying:

”No; she's in England with my boy.” He was as non-committal for Dr.

Gurnet as if he had been a wild elephant. He admitted Peter with a change of voice, and asked eagerly if things with lungs were hereditary or catching?

”Not at present in your case,” Dr. Gurnet informed him. ”By the by, you'll get better, you know. You're a little too old to cure, but you'll patch up.”

”What does that mean?” Winn demanded. ”Shall I be a broken-winded, cats'-meat hack?”

Dr. Gurnet shook his head.

”You can go back to your regiment,” he said, ”and do anything you like bar pig-sticking and polo in a year's time. That is to say, if you do as you are told for that year and will have the kindness to remember that, if you do not, I am not responsible, nor shall I be in any great degree inconsolable. I am here like a sign-post; my part of the business is to point the road. I really don't care if you follow it or not; but I should be desolated, of course, if you followed it and didn't arrive.

This, however, has not yet occurred to me.

”You will be out of doors nine hours a day, and kindly fill in this card for me. You may skate, but not ski or toboggan, nor take more than four hours' active exercise out of the twenty-four. In a month's time I shall be pleased to see you. Remember about the German and--er--do you ever flirt?”

Winn stared ominously.

”Flirt? No,” he said. ”Why the devil should I?”

Dr. Gurnet gave a peculiar little smile, half quizzical and half kindly.