SEPTIMUS MADDOCK, DECEASED
It was getting well on into November when I strolled one afternoon
into the hospital museum, not with any specific object but rather
vaguely in search of something to do. During the last few days I had
developed a slight revival of industry--which had coincided, oddly
enough, with a marked deterioration of the weather--and, pathology
being my weakest point, the museum had seemed to call me (though not
very loudly, I fear) to browse amongst its multitudinous jars and dry
preparations.
There was only one person in the great room; but he was a very
important person; being none other than our lecturer on Medical
Jurisprudence, Dr. John Thorndyke. He was seated at a small table
whereon was set out a collection of jars and a number of large
photographs, of which he appeared to be making a catalogue; but intent
as he was on his occupation, he looked up as I entered and greeted me
with a genial smile.
“What do you think of my little collection, Jardine?” he asked, as I
approached deferentially. Before replying, I ran a vaguely enquiring
eye over the group of objects on the table and was mighty little
enlightened thereby. It was certainly a queer collection. There was a
flat jar which contained a series of five differently-coloured mice,
another with a similar series of three rats, a human foot, a
hand--manifestly deformed--a series of four fowls’ heads and a number
of photographs of plants.
“It looks,” I replied, at length, “like what the auctioneers would
call a miscellaneous lot.”
“Yes,” Dr. Thorndyke agreed, “it is a miscellaneous collection in a
sense. But there is a connecting idea. It illustrates certain
phenomena of inheritance which were discovered and described by
Mendel.”
“Mendel!” I exclaimed. “Who is he? I never heard of him.”
“I daresay not,” said Thorndyke, “though he published his results
before you were born. But the importance of his discoveries is only
now beginning to be appreciated.”
“I suppose,” said I, “the subject is too large and complex for a short
explanation to be possible.”
“The subject is a large one, of course,” he replied; “but, put in a
nutshell, Mendel’s great discovery amounts to this; that, whereas
certain characters are inherited only partially and fade off gradually
in successive generations, certain other characters are inherited
completely and pass unchanged from generation to generation. To take a
couple of illustrative cases: If a negro marries a European, the
offspring are mulattoes--forms intermediate between the negro and the
European. If a mulatto marries a European, the offspring are
quadroons--another intermediate form; and the next generation gives us
the octoroon--intermediate again between the quadroon and the
European. And so, from generation to generation, the negro character
gradually fades away and finally disappears. But there are other
characters which are inherited entire or not at all, and such
characters appear in pairs which are positive or negative to one
another. Sex is a case in point. A male marries a female and the
offspring are either male or female, never intermediate. The
sex-character of only one parent is inherited, and it is inherited
completely. The characters of maleness and femaleness pass down
unchanged through the ages with no tendency to diminish or to shade
off into one another. That is a case of Mendelian inheritance.”
I ran my eyes over the collection and they presently lighted on the
rather abnormal-looking foot, hanging, white and shrivelled in the
clear spirit. I lifted the jar from the table and then, noticing for
the first time, that the foot had a supernumerary toe, I enquired what
point the specimen illustrated.
“That six-toed foot,” Thorndyke replied, “is an example of a deformity
that is transmitted unchanged for an indefinite number of generations.
This brachy-dactylous hand is another instance. The brachy-dactylia
reappears in the offspring either completely or not at all. There are
no intermediate conditions.”
He picked up the jar, and, having wiped the glass with a duster,
exhibited the hand which was suspended within; and a strange-looking
hand it was; broad and stumpy, like the hand of a mole.
“There seem to be only two joints to each finger,” I said.
“Yes. The fingers are all thumbs, and the thumb is only a demi-thumb.
A joint is suppressed in each digit.”
“It must make the hand very clumsy and useless,” I remarked.
“So one would think. It isn’t exactly the type of hand for a Liszt or
a Paganini. And yet we mustn’t assume too much. I once saw an armless
man copying pictures in the Luxembourg, and copying them very well,
too. He held his brush with his toes; and he was so handy with his
feet that he not only painted really dextrously, but managed to take
his hat off to a lady with quite a fine flourish. So you see, Jardine,
it is not the hand that matters, but rather the brain that actuates
it. A very indifferent hand will serve if the motor centres are of the
right sort.”
He replaced the jar on the table, and then, after a short pause,
turning quickly to me, he asked:
“What are you doing at present, Jardine?”
“Principally idling, sir,” I replied.
“And not a bad thing to do either,” he rejoined with a smile, “if you
do it thoroughly and don’t keep it up too long. How would you like to
take charge of a practice for a week or so?”
“I don’t know that I should particularly care to, sir,” I answered.
“Why not? It would be a useful experience and would bring you useful
knowledge; knowledge that you have got to acquire sooner or later.
Hospital conditions, you know, are not normal conditions.
“General practice is normal medical practice, and the sooner you get
to know the conditions of the great world the better for you. If you
stick to the wards too long you will get to be like the nurses; who
seem to think that,
“‘All the world’s a hospital,
And men and women only patients.’”
I reflected for a few moments. It was perfectly true. I was a
qualified medical man, and yet of the ordinary routine of private
practice I had not the faintest knowledge. To me, all sick people were
either in-patients or out-patients.
“Had you any particular practice in your mind, sir?” I asked.
“Yes. I met one of our old students just now. He is at his wit’s end
to find a _locum tenens_. He has to go away to-night or to-morrow
morning, but he can’t get anyone to look after his work. Won’t you go
to his relief? It’s an easy practice, I believe.”
I turned the question over in my mind and finally decided to try the
venture.
“That’s right,” said Dr. Thorndyke. “You’ll help a professional
brother, at any rate, and pick up a little experience. Our friend’s
name is Batson, and he lives in Jacob Street, Hampstead Road. I’ll
write it down.”
He handed me a slip of paper with the address on it and wished me
success; and I started at once from the hospital, already quite
elated, as is the way of the youthful, at the prospect of a new
experience.
Dr. Batson’s establishment in Jacob Street was modest to the verge of
dingyness. But Jacob Street, itself, was dingy, and so was the
immediate neighbourhood; a district of tall, grimy houses that might
easily have seen better days. However, Dr. Batson himself was spruce
enough and in excellent spirits at my arrival, as was evident when he
bounced into the room with a jovial greeting, bringing in with him a
faint aroma of sherry.
“Delighted to see you, Doctor!” he exclaimed in his large brisk voice
(that “doctor” was a diplomatic hit on his part. They don’t call
newly-qualified men “doctor” at the hospital.) “I met Thorndyke this
morning and told him of my predicament. A busy man is the Great
Unraveller, but never too busy to do a kindness to his friends. Can
you take over to-night?”
“I could,” said I.
“Then do. I want particularly to be off by the eight-thirty from
Liverpool Street. Drop in and have some grub about six-thirty; I shall
have polished off the day’s work by then and you’ll just come in for
the evening consultations.”
“Are there any cases that you will want me to see with you?” I asked.
“Oh, no,” Batson replied, rather airily I thought. “They’re all plain
sailing. There’s a typhoid, he’s doing well--fourth week; and there’s
a tonsilitis and a psoas abscess--that’s rather tedious, but still,
it’s improving--and an old woman with a liver. You won’t have any
difficulty with them. There’s only one queer case; a heart.”
“Valvular?” I asked.
“No, not valvular; I can tell you that much. I know what it isn’t, but
I’m hanged if I know what it is. Chappie complains of pain, shortness
of breath, faintness and so on, but I can’t find anything to account
for it. Heart-sounds all right, pulse quite good, no dropsy, no
nothing. Seems like malingering, but I don’t see why he should
malinger. I think I’ll get you to drop in this evening and have a look
at him.”
“Are you keeping him in bed?” I asked.
“Yes,” said Batson, “I am now; not that his general condition seems to
demand it. But he has had one or two fainting attacks, and yesterday
he must needs fall down flop in his bedroom when there was nobody
there, and, by way of making things more comfortable, he drops his
medicine bottle and falls on the fragments. He might have killed
himself, you know,” Batson added in an aggrieved tone; “as it was, a
long splinter from the bottom of the bottle stuck into his back and
made quite a deep little wound. So I’ve kept him in bed since, out of
harm’s way; and there he is, deuced sorry for himself but, as far as I
can make out, without a single tangible symptom.”
“No facial signs? Nothing unusual in his colour or expression?”
Batson laughed and tapped his gold-rimmed spectacles.
“Ah! There you are! When you’ve got minus five d and some irregular
astigmatism and a pair of glasses that don’t correct it, all human
beings look pretty much alike; a trifle sketchy, don’t you know. _I_
didn’t see anything unusual in his face, but _you_ might. Time will
show. Now you cut along and fetch your traps, and I’ll skip round and
polish off the sufferers.”
He launched me into the outer greyness of Jacob Street and bounced off
in the direction of Cumberland Market, leaving me to pursue my way to
my lodgings at Gospel Oak.
As I threaded the teeming streets of Camden Town I meditated on the
new experience that was opening to me, and, with youthful egotism, I
already saw myself making a brilliant diagnosis of an obscure heart
case. Also I reflected with some surprise on the calm view that Batson
took of his defective eyesight. A certain type of painter, as I had
observed, finds in semi-blindness a valuable gift which helps him to
eliminate trivial detail and to impart a noble breadth of effect to
his pictures; but to a doctor no such self-delusion would seem
possible. Visual acuteness is the most precious item in his equipment.
I crammed into a large Gladstone bag the bare necessaries for a week’s
stay, together with a few indispensable instruments, and then mounted
the jingling horse-tram of those pre-electric days, which, in due
course, deposited me at the end of Jacob Street, Hampstead Road. Dr.
Batson had not returned from his round when I arrived, but a few
minutes later he burst into the surgery humming an air from “The
Mikado.”
“Ha! Here you are then! Punctual to the minute!” He hung his hat on a
peg, laid his visiting-list on the desk of the dispensing counter and
began to compound medicine with the speed of a prestidigitateur,
talking volubly all the time.
“That’s for the old woman with the liver, Mrs. Mudge, Cumberland
Market, you’ll see her prescription in the day book. S’pose you don’t
know how to wrap up a bottle of medicine. Better watch me. This is the
way.” He slapped the bottle down on a square of cut paper, gave a few
dextrous twiddles of his fingers and held out for my inspection a
little white parcel like the mummy-case of a deceased medicine bottle.
“It’s quite easy when you’ve had a little practice,” he said, deftly
sticking the ends down with sealing-wax, “but you’ll make a frightful
mucker of it at first.” Which prophecy was duly fulfilled that very
evening.
“What time had I better see that heart case?” said I.
“Oh, you won’t have to see it at all. Man’s dead. Message left half an
hour ago. Pity, isn’t it? I should have liked to hear what you thought
of him. Must have been fatty heart. I’ll write out the certificate
while I think of it. Maggie! Where’s that note that Mrs. Samway left?”
The question was roared out vaguely through the open door to a servant
of unknown whereabouts, and resulted in the appearance of a somewhat
scraggy housemaid bearing an opened note.
“Here we are,” said Batson, snatching the note out of its envelope and
opening the book of certificate forms; “Septimus Maddock was the
chappie’s name, age fifty-one, address 23, Gayton Street, cause of
death--that’s just what I should like to know--primary cause,
secondary causes--I wish these infernal government clerks had got
something better to do than fill printed forms with silly conundrums.
I shall put “Morbus Cordis”; that ought to be enough for them. Mrs.
Samway--that’s his landlady, you know--will probably call for the
certificate during the evening.”
“Aren’t you going to inspect the body?” I asked.
“Lord, no! Why should I! It isn’t necessary, you know. I’m not an
undertaker. Wish I was. Dead people good deal more profitable than
live ones.”
“But surely,” I exclaimed, “the death ought to be verified. Why the
man may not be dead at all.”
“I know,” said Batson, scribbling away like a minor poet, “but that
isn’t my business. Business of the Law. Law wastes your time with a
heap of silly questions that don’t matter and leaves out the question
that does. Asks exact time when I last saw him alive, which doesn’t
matter a hang, and doesn’t ask whether I saw him dead. Bumble was
right. Law’s an ass.”
“But still,” I persisted, “leaving the legal requirements out of
consideration, oughtn’t you for your own sake, and as a public duty,
to verify the death? Supposing the man were not really dead?”
“That would be awkward for him,” said Batson, “and awkward for me,
too, if he came to life before they buried him. But it doesn’t really
happen in real life. Premature burial only occurs in novels.”
His easy-going confidence jarred on me considerably. How could he, or
anyone else, know what happened?
“I don’t see how you arrive at that,” I objected. “It could only be
proved by wholesale disinterment. And the fact remains that, if you
don’t verify a reported death you have no security against premature
burial--or even cremation.”
Batson started up and stared at me, his wide-open, pale-blue eyes
looking ridiculously small through his deep, concave spectacles.
“By Jove!” he exclaimed, “I am glad you mentioned that--about
cremation, I mean, because that is what will probably happen. I
witnessed the chappie’s will a couple of days ago, and I remember now
that one of the clauses stipulated that his body should be cremated.
So I shall have to verify the death for the purpose of the cremation
certificate. We’d better pop round and see him at once.”
With characteristic impulsiveness he sprang to his feet, snatched his
hat from its peg, and started forth, leaving me to follow.
“Beastly nuisance, these special regulations,” said Batson, as he
ambled briskly up the street. “Give a lot of trouble and cause a lot
of delay.”
“Isn’t the ordinary death certificate sufficient in a case of
cremation?” I asked.
“For purposes of law it is, though there is some talk of new
legislation on the subject, but the Company are a law unto themselves.
They have made the most infernally stringent regulations, and, as
there is no crematorium near London excepting the one at Woking, you
have to abide by their rules. And that reminds me--” here Batson
halted and scowled at me ferociously through his spectacles.
“Reminds you?” I repeated.
“That they require a second death certificate, signed by a man with
certain special qualifications.” He stood awhile frowning and
muttering under his breath and then suddenly turned and bounced off in
a new direction.
“Going to catch the other chappie and take him with us,” he explained,
as he darted out into the Hampstead Road. “Be off my mind then. A
fellow named O’Connor, Assistant Physician to the North London
Hospital. He’ll do if we can catch him at home. If not, you’ll have to
manage him.”
Batson looked at his watch--holding it within four inches of his
nose--and broke into a trot as we entered a quiet square. Halfway up
he halted at a door which bore a modest brass plate inscribed “Dr.
O’Connor,” and seizing the bell-knob, worked it vigorously in and out
as if it were the handle of an air-pump.
“Doctor in?” he demanded briskly of a startled housemaid; and, without
waiting for an answer, he darted into the hall, down the whole length
of which he staggered, executing a sort of sword-dance, having caught
his toe on an unobserved door-mat.
The doctor was in and he shortly appeared in evening dress with an
overcoat on his arm, and apparently in as great a hurry as Batson
himself.
“Won’t it do to-morrow?” he asked, when Batson had explained his
difficulties and the service required.
“Might as well come now,” said Batson persuasively; “won’t take a
minute and then I can go away in peace.”
“Very well,” said O’Connor, wriggling into his overcoat. “You go along
and I’ll follow in a few minutes. I’ve got to look in on a patient on
my way up west, and I shall be late for my appointment as it is. Write
the address on my card, here.”
He held out a card to my principal, and when the latter had scribbled
the address on it, he bustled out and vanished up the square. Batson
followed at the same headlong speed, and, again overlooking the mat,
came out on the pavement like an ill-started sprinter.
Gayton Street, at which we shortly arrived, was a grey and dingy
side-street exactly like a score of others in the same locality, and
Number 23 differed from the rest of the seedy-looking houses in no
respect save that it was perhaps a shade more dingy. The door was
opened in answer to Batson’s indecorously brisk knock by a woman--or
perhaps I should say a lady--who at once admitted us and to whom
Batson began, without preface, to explain the situation.
“I got your note, Mrs. Samway. Was going to bring my friend, here,
round to see the patient. Very unfortunate affair. Very sad.
Unexpected, too. Didn’t seem particularly bad yesterday. What time did
it happen?”
“I can’t say exactly,” was the reply. “He seemed quite comfortable
when I looked in on him the last thing at night, but when I went in
about seven this morning he was dead. I should have let you know
sooner, but I was expecting you to call.”
“H’m, yes,” said Batson, “very unfortunate. By the way, Mr. Maddock
desired that his remains should be cremated, I think?”
“Yes, so my husband tells me. He is the executor of the will, you
remember, in the absence of any relatives. All Mr. Maddock’s relations
seem to be in America.”
“Have you got the certificate forms?” asked Batson.
“Yes. My husband got all the papers from the undertaker this
afternoon.”
“Very well, Mrs. Samway, then we’ll just take a look at the body--have
to certify that I’ve seen it, you know.”
Mrs. Samway ushered us into a sitting-room where she had apparently
been working alone, for an unfinished mourning garment of some kind
lay on the table. Leaving us here, she went away and presently
returned with a sheaf of papers and a lighted candle, when we rose and
followed her to a back room on the ground floor. It was a smallish
room, sparely furnished, with heavy curtains drawn across the window,
and by one wall a bed, on which was a motionless figure covered by a
sheet.
Our conductress stood the candlestick on a table by the bed and
stepped back to make way for Batson, who drew back the sheet and
looked down on the body in his peering, near-sighted fashion. The
deceased seemed to be a rather frail-looking man of about fifty, but,
beyond the fact that he was clean shaven, I could form very little
idea of his appearance, since, in addition to the usual bandage under
the chin to close the mouth, a tape had been carried round the head to
secure a couple of pads of cotton wool over the eyes to keep the
eyelids closed.
As Batson applied his stethoscope to the chest of the dead man, I
glanced at our hostess not without interest. Mrs. Samway was an
unusual-looking woman, and I thought her decidedly handsome though not
attractive to me personally. She seemed to be about thirty, rather
over the medium height and of fine Junoesque proportions, with a small
head very gracefully set on the shoulders. Her jet-black hair,
formally parted in the middle, was brought down either side of the
forehead in wavy, but very smooth, masses and gathered behind in a
neat, precisely-plaited coil. The general effect reminded me of the
so-called “Clytie,” having the same reposefulness though not the
gentleness and softness of that lovely head. But the most remarkable
feature of this woman was the colour of her eyes, which were of the
palest grey or hazel that I have ever seen; so pale in fact that they
told as spots of light, like the eyes of some lemurs or those of a cat
seen in the dusk; a peculiarity that imparted a curiously intense and
penetrating quality to her glance.
I had just noted these particulars when Batson, having finished his
examination, held out the stethoscope to me.
“May as well listen, as you’re here,” said he, and, turning to our
hostess, he added: “Let us see those papers, Mrs. Samway.”
As he stepped over to the table, I took his place on a chair by the
bedside and proceeded to make an examination. It was, of course, only
a matter of form, for the man was obviously dead; but having insisted
so strongly on the necessity of verifying the death I had to make a
show of becoming scepticism. Accordingly I tested, both by touch and
with the stethoscope, the region of the heart. Needless to say, no
heart-sounds were to be distinguished, nor any signs of pulsation;
indeed, the very first touch of my hand on the chilly surface of the
chest was enough to banish any doubt. No living body could be so
entirely destitute of animal heat.
I laid down the stethoscope and looked reflectively at the dead man,
lying so still and rigid, with his bandaged jaws and blindfolded eyes,
and speculated vaguely on his personality when alive and on the hidden
disease that had so suddenly cut him off from the land of the living;
and insensibly--by habit I suppose--my fingers strayed to his clammy,
pulseless wrist. The sleeve of his night-shirt was excessively long,
almost covering the fingers, and I had to turn it back to reach the
spot where the pulse would normally be felt. In doing this, I moved
the dead hand slightly and then became aware of a well-marked _rigor
mortis_, or death stiffening in the arm of the corpse; a condition
which I ought to have observed sooner.
At this moment, happening to look up, I caught the eye of Mrs. Samway
fixed on me with a very remarkable expression. She was leaning over
Batson as he filled up the voluminous certificate, but had evidently
been watching me, and the expression of her pale, cat-like eyes left
no doubt in my mind that she strongly resented my proceedings. In some
confusion, and accusing myself of some failure in outward decorum, I
hastily drew down the dead man’s sleeve and rose from the bedside.
“You noticed, I suppose,” said I, “that there is fairly well-marked
_rigor mortis_?”
“I didn’t,” said Batson, “but if you did it’ll do as well. Better
mention it to O’Connor when he comes. He ought to be here now.”
“Who is O’Connor?” asked Mrs. Samway.
“Oh, he is the doctor who is going to sign the confirmatory
certificate.”
Again a gleam of unmistakable anger flashed from our hostess’ eyes as
she demanded:
“Then who is this gentleman?”
“This is Dr. Humphrey Jardine,” said Batson. “’Pologize for not
introducing him before. Dr. Jardine is taking my practice while I’m
away. I’m off to-night for about a week.”
Mrs. Samway withered me with a baleful glance of her singular eyes,
and remarked stiffly:
“I don’t quite see why you brought him here.”
She turned her back on me, and I decided that Mrs. Samway was somewhat
of a Tartar; though, to be sure, my presence was a distinct intrusion.
I was about to beat a retreat when Batson’s apologies were interrupted
by a noisy rat-tat at the street door.
“Ah, here’s O’Connor,” said Batson, and, as Mrs. Samway went out to
open the door, he added: “Seem to have put our foot in it, though I
don’t see why she need have been so peppery about it. And O’Connor
needn’t have banged at the door like that, with death in the house.
He’ll get into trouble if he doesn’t look out.”
Our colleague’s manner was certainly not ingratiating. He burst into
the room with his watch in his hand protesting that he was three
minutes late already, “and,” he added, “if there is one thing that I
detest, it’s being late at dinner. Got the forms?”
“Yes,” replied Batson, “here they are. That’s my certificate on the
front page. Yours is overleaf.”
Dr. O’Connor glanced rapidly down the long table of questions,
muttering discontentedly. “‘Made careful external examination?’ H’m.
‘Have you made a post mortem?’ No, of course, I haven’t. What an
infernal rigmarole! If cremation ever becomes general there’ll be no
time for anything but funerals. Who nursed the deceased?”
“I did,” said Mrs. Samway. “My husband relieved me occasionally, but
nearly all the nursing was done by me. My name is Letitia Samway.”
“Was the deceased a relation of yours?”
“No; only a friend. He lived with us for a time in Paris and came to
England with us.”
“What was his occupation?”
“He was nominally a dealer in works of art. Actually he was a man of
independent means.”
“Have you any pecuniary interest in his death?”
“He has left us about seventy pounds. My husband is the executor of
the will.”
“I see. Well, I’d better have a few words with you outside, Batson,
before I make my examination. It’s all a confounded farce, but we must
go through the proper forms, I suppose.”
“Yes, by all means,” said Batson. “Don’t leave any loop-hole for
queries or objections.” He rose and accompanied O’Connor out into the
hall, whence the sound of hurried muttering came faintly through the
door.
As soon as we were alone, I endeavoured to make my peace with Mrs.
Samway by offering apologies for my intrusion into the house of
mourning.
“For the time being,” I concluded, “I am Dr. Batson’s assistant, and,
as he seemed to wish me to come with him, I came without considering
that my presence might be objected to. I hope you will forgive me.”
My humility appeared entirely to appease her; in a moment her stiff
and forbidding manner melted into one that was quite gracious and she
rewarded me with a smile that made her face really charming.
“Of course,” she said, “it was silly of me to be so cantankerous and
so rude, too. But it did look a little callous, you know, when I saw
you playing with his poor, dead hand; so you must make allowances.”
She smiled again, very prettily, and at this moment my two colleagues
re-entered the room.
“Now, then,” said O’Connor, “let us see the body and then we shall
have finished.”
He strode over to the bed, and, turning back the sheet, made a rapid
inspection of the corpse.
“Ridiculous farce,” he muttered. “Looks all right. Would, in any case
though. Parcel of red tape. What’s the good of looking at the outside
of a body? Post-mortem’s the only thing that’s any use. What’s this
piece of tape-plaster on the back?”
“Oh,” said Batson, “that is a little cut that he made by falling on a
broken bottle. I stuck the plaster on because you can’t get a bandage
to hold satisfactorily on the back. Besides, he didn’t want a bandage
constricting his chest.”
“No, of course not,” O’Connor agreed. “Well, it’s all regular and
straightforward. Give me the form and I’ll fill it up and sign it.” He
seated himself at the table, looked once more at his watch, groaned
aloud and began to write furiously.
“The Egyptians weren’t such bad judges, after all,” he remarked as he
laid down the pen and rose from his chair. “Embalming may have been
troublesome, but when it was done it was done for good. The deceased
was always accessible for reference in case of a dispute, and all this
red tape was saved. Good-night, Mrs. Samway.” He buttoned up his coat
and bustled off, and a minute or so later we followed.
“By Jove!” exclaimed Batson, “this business has upset my arrangements
finely. I shall have to buck up if I’m going to catch my train.
There’s all the medicine to be made up and sent out yet, to say
nothing of dinner. But dinner will have to wait until the business is
all settled up. Don’t you hurry, Jardine. I’ll just run on and get to
work.” He broke into an elephantine trot and soon disappeared round a
corner, and, when I arrived at the surgery, I found him posting up the
day-book with the speed of a parliamentary reporter.
Batson’s dexterity with medicine-bottles and wrapping paper filled me
with admiration and despair. I made a futile effort to assist, but in
the end, he snatched away the crumpled paper in which I was struggling
to enswathe a bottle, dropped it into the waste-paper basket, snatched
up a clean sheet and--slap! bang! in the twinkling of an eye, he had
transformed the bottle into a neat, little white parcel as a conjuror
changes a cocked hat into a guinea-pig. It was wonderful.
My host was a cheerful soul, but restless. He got up from the table no
less than six times to pack some article that he had just thought of;
and after dinner, when I accompanied him to his bedroom, I saw him
empty his trunk no less than three times to make sure that he had
forgotten nothing. He quite worried me. Your over-quick man is apt to
wear out other people’s nerves more than his own. I began to look
anxiously at the clock, and felt a real relief when the maid came to
announce that the cab was at the door.
“Well, good-bye, Doctor!” he sang out cheerily, shaking my hand
through the open window of the cab. “Don’t forget to keep the
stock-bottles filled up. Saves a world of trouble. And don’t take too
long on your rounds. Ta! ta!”
The cab rattled away and I went back into the house, a full-blown
general practitioner.