by Max Brand
"Don't you go worrying," said Billy to the accused man. "I won't make any trouble for you. I was thinking too much about the fish I was carrying."
Someone was explaining to the great Archbold: "You're the closest one. You do doctoring or something like it. Take a look to see can you stop that leg bleeding. It's broke plumb bad. It's broke terrible bad!"
Nora took Nancy by the arm. "We'll get out of here," she said. "There's no use taking up space and air where we can't do any good. Mr. Archbold will take care of him."
"Wait, Nora," said the girl. "See how brave he is, poor lamb. Why don't they prop up his head a little?"
She was straightway on the floor beside him with her coat tucked under his head and her handkerchief busy wiping the sweat of pain from his face.
"Fishing? At this time of year?" said Nancy to the boy, smiling.
"You know," he said. "Over in the lagoon by the old boathouse."
"Ah, I remember the old boathouse but I thought that everybody else had forgotten it," said Nancy.
"Everybody has," agreed Billy. "That's why everything over there is so swell and so still. Nobody ever comes there. Not all year long. And—and—"
Kildare barely heard Nancy murmur:
"Don't try to talk, Billy. I know there's terrible pain, poor old dear!"
He managed to lift his eyes and give her one twisting grin of gratitude; after that, his whole soul was concentrated on that great and terrible ideal of silence, that man-made God or tyrant of those who profess manliness.
The great Archbold, in the meantime, stood for a moment with all eyes fixed upon him. He stood with his legs braced well apart, his arms folded high on his chest and his bushy brows drawn down over his eyes as he stared at the boy.
"We'll see to this," said the healer and, disappearing into his office for an instant, he came back with a case which he opened, exposing shining rows of steel instruments.
"And now," said Archbold, "we'll look into the matter."
He tossed some cloth to bystanders, saying: "Just mop the blood up from the floor, will you? If it runs into the corners, you know what blood is—have to tear up the floor to get rid of the signs of it, almost...Now let me see this young man..."
So saying, he undid the bandage which had been bound around the leg of Billy in the street below. It was a compound fracture of both bones of the lower leg, the splintered edges thrusting out through the skin. The blood came fast. Three or four of the audience had enough after a single glance and got out hastily.
"An artery!" said the great Archbold. "And the bones right out through the skin. Too bad, too bad. Except that he's young enough to learn how to use an artificial limb pretty well. But they're never as good as the limbs God gave us."
Kildare turned his back and looked out the window, trying to forget the damage which ignorance might do to the lad. A moment later, the first sign of pain came from the boy—a low, stifled moan.
Kildare whipped around. Billy, with his eyes closed, blue-white around the mouth, was trying to smile and endure. Archbold seemed to be fumbling aimlessly.
"What will you do to the leg, Doctor Archbold?" asked Kildare anxiously.
"A tourniquet above the knee, young man," said the great Archbold, pointing. "And after the flow of blood has been stopped, the leg must come off at the knee. A pity, isn't it? But better the leg than the life."
Poor Billy, as he heard this pronouncement, turned his face suddenly toward Nancy, and the girl covered his eyes, holding him close.
"You mean amputation, actually?" said Kildare.
"Mean it? Of course I mean it!" exclaimed Archbold. "Now if you will give me a little more room, my kind friends..."
"You damned butcher!" said Kildare through his teeth.
"Ah? Ah?" cried Archbold. "What is this?"
Kildare snatched up the medical kit. He said savagely: "Keep your hands away from him. You rat, don't touch him."
Then he was on his knees and at work. He had to open the wound first until the blood from the artery was spurting. With a hemostat first dipped in alcohol he clipped the open blood vessel. Hemostat and all he covered with a swift bandage and then arranged the splints. He was halfway through his work when something drew up his eyes involuntarily, and he saw Nancy staring at him in horror. It was only a glance, but it was sufficient to tell him that he had revealed himself and lost his hold on her for ever. When his work ended he saw that she was gone from the room.
"We'll get you to my hospital, Billy," he said, "and that leg of yours will be fixed so that it'll be as strong as the other one. Will you trust me for that?"
He stood up in time to see the great Archbold disappearing into his inner office; the key sounded in the lock as the miracle man protected the rear of his retreat. But that did not matter now. The ambulance had been telephoned for. In an hour or so Billy would be getting the best care the great hospital could give him.
Somebody was saying:
"This doctor that ain't a doctor—this Archbold that was gunna whip off the leg at the knee—don't he need a little looking into?"
It seemed to be the solemn and grim opinion of the others that this was the truth; but Kildare had no time to listen to them. Nora had caught him by the arm and said: "Hurry, Mr. Stevens. Nancy ain't here. She's gone. Out to get the air, poor darling, and she mustn't be left alone. Lord God, what a shock it must of been to her to see that you are a doctor, after all! If I ever mistrust the Irish in me when it speaks again, call me a fool."
Kildare went hastily with her down the hallway. The others would see the lad safely in the ambulance, of course, when it arrived.
"When did Nancy leave the room?" he asked.
"I can't say for the life of me," said the nurse. "I was that busy watching your fingers do their dance and never tripping themselves up once at all. But oh, Doctor Stevens, or whatever your unlucky name may be, why did you lie to poor Nancy? And who sent you spying on her?"
Kildare did not answer. He got with Nora down to the car they had left in the street, but Nancy was not in it. Her absence was more of a shock to him than to Nora, who said calmly enough: "Ah, she's gone back to the old house to have a cry—and God forgive you, doctor! But hurry, man, hurry to come to her. She's a nervous girl. She's a terribly nervous girl if there's one in the world."
They skidded every corner on the way back. When he had jammed on the brakes before the house, he jumped from the car and was already back through the lower floor to the kitchen before the voice of Nora entered the building crying: "Nancy! Oh, Nancy, darling, where are you?"
She was not on the first floor at least. He raced up to the second and the third storey, plunging from room to room, opening even the closet doors. Then he came down to the second storey again and found Nora at the top of the stairs leaning against the balustrade with a changed face, haggard and fallen like soft dough.
"Have you thought where she could have gone?" he asked. "Can you make a single guess about her?"
"I can make a guess easy enough," said Nora slowly, drawing her breath in between every word or so. "There's the railroad bridge that makes a good drop. There's the inlet that's taken more than one unhappy soul before her."
"She's not done that. She's hidden herself. Try to think if there's a place away from the house where she might have hidden herself; some place she knew when she was a child."
"What's she now but a child?" demanded the panting voice of Nora. "The poor innocent—the poor sweet—ah, but you've been the murder and the death of her. God pity the day that she ever saw you, Mr. Doctor Stevens or whatever your lying name may be."
"Try to make sense," begged Kildare. "Nora, what's in her mind that drives her frantic?"
"Would I be telling you?" demanded Nora. "God strike me before I'd whisper a word of it. May the black bog take you and keep you. May the mould crawl on the skin of your body! May the heart break and the soul die in you, for you've been the death of my darling!"
Kildare got past her and down the st
airs. It would be easy for Nancy to thumb a ride to New York, and it was vastly important that he should get to her father's house before she did. He shot the car down the drive and swung it at a stagger on to the road.
* * *
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
THE Messenger butler looked at Kildare with an eye of surprise when he opened the door for him.
"Is Mr. Messenger here?" asked Kildare.
"He is, and busy," said the butler. "But not too busy to see you, sir, I'm sure. He's in the library."
There were unpleasant implications in the tone of this speech. Kildare ran up the stairs and found the library door open. Inside, three men with a bulldog look about all of them sat with Paul Messenger. He was saying:
"You can start your questions. I think I've told the complete story. I'd like to keep it from the newspapers if possible. But if you think the publicity would give us a better chance to find her, I'll call in the reporters."
He saw Kildare then and, rising from his chair, he moved across the room toward him, saying in his clear calm voice to the police: "Excuse me for an instant. I must talk with the doctor who was with her when she disappeared. This is young Doctor Kildare, gentlemen, who seems to have frightened her away."
He came out to Kildare and closed the door behind him. He was scrupulously polite. He was perfectly cold.
"I have heard from Nora," said Messenger. "She tells me that you finally revealed yourself as a doctor and that Nancy, naturally, was frightened away."
"It was an accident case. I couldn't stand by and see a youngster victimised for life."
"You found the youngster more important than Nancy?" asked Messenger.
He smiled on Kildare. He was beyond anger.
"You have the police in there, haven't you?" asked Kildare.
"I felt that it was the thing to do. Do you object?"
Kildare said calmly: "I think that if they come near her, she'll take her life."
Messenger put a quick hand out and braced himself against the wall, but he rallied at once.
"There is that possibility," agreed Messenger. "But from this point forward I prefer the regular to the irregular methods—in spite of the lucky experience of the Chanlers. The police, perhaps the newspapers, will take up where you have left off, doctor."
"If you use the newspapers, she will know what's coming. She'll kill herself."
He struck as brutally hard as Messenger and watched the father wince.
After a moment of consideration, Messenger said:
"I think there is only one thing we can reach a mutual agreement upon, and that is to have nothing to do with one another from this point forward. We come to the consideration of your fee. I have my chequebook here. Kindly name any sum you have in mind."
"Interns," said Kildare, "can't take money."
"They cannot take money? What can you take, Doctor Kildare?"
He answered: "Nothing!"
"Ah," said Messenger, "but you hoped to find advancement in your hospital as a result of your work on this case?"
Kildare considered him through an infinite distance of thought.
"There's no charge to you," he said.
"You make me uncomfortable," answered Messenger.
"That's too bad," said Kildare, still watching him curiously. "You can repay me in one way."
"That interests me."
"Will you tell me the cause of her mother's death?"
"My dear doctor, so far as I am concerned," said Messenger, "the case is now in the hands of the police—and perhaps of the newspapers. They may find my daughter for me—since you have lost her."
"You're hating me," said Kildare, nodding.
"Not at all," answered Messenger. "I should be punished, not you. The most important work that could be done, I entrusted to a bit of cold blood. I should have searched for a thoroughbred."
"I understand you," said Kildare. "Good-bye, Mr. Messenger."
"Not yet," insisted Messenger. "There remains the very important question of remuneration. I cannot take something—whatever it is—for nothing."
Kildare turned on his heel and left the house.
He went back to the hospital and reported at the office of Carew.
"Messengers with bad news shouldn't be so prompt," said Carew with his usual hard realism. "I've heard from our friend Messenger. He seems to think that you've been a bad bargain. Young Doctor Kildare was a valuable article in the Messenger house yesterday, but today there's a bear market on Kildares. As a matter of fact Messenger was in an expansive mood about the whole hospital because of the fine work he thought you were doing. I had him tremendously interested in an extension of our laboratories and some of the most expensive equipment in the world. But of course that's ended now. Why did you scare the girl away, Kildare? You might have thought twice about that, mightn't you?"
He kept tapping at his cigar, though the ashes had not had a chance to form, and looking past Kildare out the window.
When Kildare said nothing, he added: "Well, there goes a pipe dream out of the window. Millions—or nothing. That's the way the world goes...I suppose you want to be assigned to regular intern duty now that Gillespie is out of your scheme of things?"
"May I have a day or two off still?" asked Kildare.
"For what?" asked Carew curiously.
"I want to try my luck at finding Miss Messenger."
Carew tapped his fingers on the desk and frowned.
"That's true," he said. "There would be a reward for that."
Kildare said nothing.
"Irregular," said Carew, "but I suppose that I could sanction it. The whole thing has turned out rather badly for you. Tell me one thing, Kildare, will you?"
"If I can, sir."
"Are you nine-tenths genius or nine-tenths damned fool?...Well, run along."
Kildare went back to his room, dropped on his bed face down, and slept like an exhausted animal. There was still a gleam of the sunset colour in the sky when he wakened, turned, and saw Tom Collins seated on the other bed with a rattling newspaper stretched between his hands.
Collins said, without looking up, "We hoped you'd get her; but instead of that, you've lost her. Rotten luck, old boy. Gillespie gone, the gal gone; it breaks you down to an ordinary level with the rest of us, doesn't it?"
"You generally have something in that flask of yours, don't you?"
"Generally."
"Give it to me."
"Easy on it. This stuff is a lot older than I am."
Kildare tipped up the flask and drained it. Collins shook it, shook its emptiness, and sighed.
"O.K.," he said. "I guess you need it. You're tops with me, brother, but you're a yellow dog with the rest of the hospital. By the way, where do you think the Messenger girl can be?"
He held out the newspaper. The disappearance was spilled right across the front page. Detective agencies, boy scouts, and the whole countryside out there in Long Island were looking for her. There was a twenty-thousand-dollar reward.
As Kildare read, Collins kept offering information.
"Don't get in the path of the Cavendish or she'll cut your throat, because it's on account of your leaving, she says, that Gillespie is taking it easy over on Staten island. And she'd sort of like to keep you away. She thinks you're the death of the old man. I talked to the Lamont girl too. She acts as though she never heard of you."
"I sold my soul for a mess of pottage, didn't I?" asked Kildare.
"Well, didn't you?"
"I wish there were some more in that flask!"
"Jimmy, don't be so damned smiling and desperate. There's going to be another day and week and month and year. And you'll be aces high again in the windup."
"Will you shut up?"
"Sure."
The telephone rang. His mother's voice took him by surprise on the wire.
"I'm downstairs," she said. "Can you see me?"
He wrenched off his clothes, got into whites so that his street dress would not start her a
sking questions, and hurried down to the reception room. The broad, unbeautiful face of his mother waited for him there. She hugged him, and he held on to her. The good soapy smell which was his earliest memory still clung to her.
"What's wrong?" asked Kildare.
"Nothing, darling. Father had some people to see, so I sneaked over here. We're going to be down for days."
"What's wrong?" he asked.
"Not a thing I'm telling you. We're going to take time off and see the Fair."
"What's wrong?" insisted Kildare.
"Oh, Jimmy. I'm afraid that your father's a sick man."
"Wait till I get my hat. We'll go over and see him."
"You can't. He'll hate me if he thinks that I've talked out of school."
"How does he seem?"
"Jimmy, Jimmy, it's the heart! I swore that I wouldn't tell you, and now it's out!"
"Everybody has a heart," said Kildare. "I'm going over to see him."
"If you do, he'll know that I've brought you. And he'll never forgive me. Wait till tomorrow. Will you do that?"
"I'll do that."
"Are you all right, Jimmy?"
"Me? I'm right as rain."
"There's such a trouble in me that I can't see whether or not you're telling me the truth; but you sound as though you were lying, dear."
"I'm not lying very much...I've got to see father."
"If he knows you're bothered about him," said Mrs. Kildare, "he'll turn a lot sicker than he is. I think what steadies him is knowing that while he's going down, you're going up. Ten times a day he starts telling me what Doctor Gillespie is doing for you, and what a great man you'll be. If he died tomorrow, he'd die happy. Oh, what a weak fool I am to have come and blabbed to you, darling!"
"Tomorrow. I have to wait till tomorrow, do I?"
"You will wait?"
"I'll do what you say. How does he look?"
"It seems to me that there's a shadow in his eye, Jimmy. But maybe, after the report he's had, it's chiefly fear."
"He's had a report?"
"Don't look at me like that, Jimmy! If God takes him, it's in God's own time. He's had the life he's wanted, and so long as he knows that you're going on and up toward the top, nothing can make him really unhappy. I want you to think of it that way. And now I must run."
