"I'll see you again," Harry Del Mar told Daughtry, at the end of his
fourth conversation on the matter of Michael's sale.
Wherein Harry Del Mar was mistaken. He never saw Daughtry again, because
Daughtry saw Doctor Emory first.
Kwaque's increasing restlessness at night, due to the swelling under his
right arm-pit, had began to wake Daughtry up. After several such
experiences, he had investigated and decided that Kwaque was sufficiently
sick to require a doctor. For which reason, one morning at eleven,
taking Kwaque along, he called at Walter Merritt Emory's office and
waited his turn in the crowded reception-room.
"I think he's got cancer, Doc.," Daughtry said, while Kwaque was pulling
off his shirt and undershirt. "He never squealed, you know, never
peeped. That's the way of niggers. I didn't find our till he got to
wakin' me up nights with his tossin' about an' groanin' in his
sleep.--There! What'd you call it? Cancer or tumour--no two ways about
it, eh?"
But the quick eye of Walter Merritt Emory had not missed, in passing, the
twisted fingers of Kwaque's left hand. Not only was his eye quick, but
it was a "leper eye." A volunteer surgeon in the first days out in the
Philippines, he had made a particular study of leprosy, and had observed
so many lepers that infallibly, except in the incipient beginnings of the
disease, he could pick out a leper at a glance. From the twisted
fingers, which was the anaesthetic form, produced by
nerve-disintegration, to the corrugated lion forehead (again anaesthetic),
his eyes flashed to the swelling under the right arm-pit and his brain
diagnosed it as the tubercular form.
Just as swiftly flashed through his brain two thoughts: the first, the
axiom, _whenever and wherever you find a leper, look for the other
leper_; the second, the desired Irish terrier, who was owned by Daughtry,
with whom Kwaque had been long associated. And here all swiftness of eye-
flashing ceased on the part of Walter Merritt Emory. He did not know how
much, if anything, the steward knew about leprosy, and he did not care to
arouse any suspicions. Casually drawing his watch to see the time, he
turned and addressed Daughtry.
"I should say his blood is out of order. He's run down. He's not used
to the recent life he's been living, nor to the food. To make certain, I
shall examine for cancer and tumour, although there's little chance of
anything like that."
And as he talked, with just a waver for a moment, his gaze lifted above
Daughtry's eyes to the area of forehead just above and between the eyes.
It was sufficient. His "leper-eye" had seen the "lion" mark of the
leper.
"You're run down yourself," he continued smoothly. "You're not up to
snuff, I'll wager. Eh?"
"Can't say that I am," Daughtry agreed. "I guess I got to get back to
the sea an' the tropics and warm the rheumatics outa me."
"Where?" queried Doctor Emory, almost absently, so well did he feign it,
as if apparently on the verge of returning to a closer examination, of
Kwaque's swelling.
Daughtry extended his left hand, with a little wiggle of the little
finger advertising the seat of the affliction. Walter Merritt Emory saw,
with seeming careless look out from under careless-drooping eyelids, the
little finger slightly swollen, slightly twisted, with a smooth, almost
shiny, silkiness of skin-texture. Again, in the course of turning to
look at Kwaque, his eyes rested an instant on the lion-lines of
Daughtry's brow.
"Rheumatism is still the great mystery," Doctor Emory said, returning to
Daughtry as if deflected by the thought. "It's almost individual, there
are so many varieties of it. Each man has a kind of his own. Any
numbness?"
Daughtry laboriously wiggled his little finger.
"Yes, sir," he answered. "It ain't as lively as it used to was."
"Ah," Walter Merritt Emory murmured, with a vastitude of confidence and
assurance. "Please sit down in that chair there. Maybe I won't be able
to cure you, but I promise you I can direct you to the best place to live
for what's the matter with you.--Miss Judson!"
And while the trained-nurse-apparelled young woman seated Dag Daughtry in
the enamelled surgeon's chair and leaned him back under direction, and
while Doctor Emory dipped his finger-tips into the strongest antiseptic
his office possessed, behind Doctor Emory's eyes, in the midst of his
brain, burned the image of a desired Irish terrier who did turns in
sailor-town cabarets, was rough-coated, and answered to the full name of
Killeny Boy.
"You've got rheumatism in more places than your little finger," he
assured Daughtry. "There's a touch right here, I'll wager, on your
forehead. One moment, please. Move if I hurt you, Otherwise sit still,
because I don't intend to hurt you. I merely want to see if my diagnosis
is correct.--There, that's it. Move when you feel anything. Rheumatism
has strange freaks.--Watch this, Miss Judson, and I'll wager this form of
rheumatism is new to you. See. He does not resent. He thinks I have
not begun yet . . . "
And as he talked, steadily, interestingly, he was doing what Dag Daughtry
never dreamed he was doing, and what made Kwaque, looking on, almost
dream he was seeing because of the unrealness and impossibleness of it.
For, with a large needle, Doctor Emory was probing the dark spot in the
midst of the vertical lion-lines. Nor did he merely probe the area.
Thrusting into it from one side, under the skin and parallel to it, he
buried the length of the needle from sight through the insensate
infiltration. This Kwaque beheld with bulging eyes; for his master
betrayed no sign that the thing was being done.
"Why don't you begin?" Dag Daughtry questioned impatiently. "Besides, my
rheumatism don't count. It's the nigger-boy's swelling."
"You need a course of treatment," Doctor Emory assured him. "Rheumatism
is a tough proposition. It should never be let grow chronic. I'll fix
up a course of treatment for you. Now, if you'll get out of the chair,
we'll look at your black servant."
But first, before Kwaque was leaned back, Doctor Emory threw over the
chair a sheet that smelled of having been roasted almost to the scorching
point. As he was about to examine Kwaque, he looked with a slight start
of recollection at his watch. When he saw the time he startled more, and
turned a reproachful face upon his assistant.
"Miss Judson," he said, coldly emphatic, "you have failed me. Here it
is, twenty before twelve, and you knew I was to confer with Doctor Hadley
over that case at eleven-thirty sharp. How he must be cursing me! You
know how peevish he is."
Miss Judson nodded, with a perfect expression of contrition and humility,
as if she knew all about it, although, in reality, she knew only all
about her employer and had never heard till that moment of his engagement
at eleven-thirty.
"Doctor Hadley's just across the hall," Doctor Emory explained to
Daughtry. "It won't take me five minutes. He and I have a disagreement.
He has diagnosed the case as chronic appendicitis and wants to operate. I
have diagnosed it as pyorrhea which has infected the stomach from the
mouth, and have suggested emetine treatment of the mouth as a cure for
the stomach disorder. Of course, you don't understand, but the point is
that I've persuaded Doctor Hadley to bring in Doctor Granville, who is a
dentist and a pyorrhea expert. And they're all waiting for me these ten
minutes! I must run.
"I'll return inside five minutes," he called back as the door to the hall
was closing upon him.--"Miss Judson, please tell those people in the
reception-room to be patient."
He did enter Doctor Hadley's office, although no sufferer from pyorrhea
or appendicitis awaited him. Instead, he used the telephone for two
calls: one to the president of the board of health; the other to the
chief of police. Fortunately, he caught both at their offices,
addressing them familiarly by their first names and talking to them most
emphatically and confidentially.
Back in his own quarters, he was patently elated.
"I told him so," he assured Miss Judson, but embracing Daughtry in the
happy confidence. "Doctor Granville backed me up. Straight pyorrhea, of
course. That knocks the operation. And right now they're jolting his
gums and the pus-sacs with emetine. Whew! A fellow likes to be right. I
deserve a smoke. Do you mind, Mr. Daughtry?"
And while the steward shook his head, Doctor Emory lighted a big Havana
and continued audibly to luxuriate in his fictitious triumph over the
other doctor. As he talked, he forgot to smoke, and, leaning quite
casually against the chair, with arrant carelessness allowed the live
coal at the end of his cigar to rest against the tip of one of Kwaque's
twisted fingers. A privy wink to Miss Judson, who was the only one who
observed his action, warned her against anything that might happen.
"You know, Mr. Daughtry," Walter Merritt Emory went on enthusiastically,
while he held the steward's eyes with his and while all the time the live
end of the cigar continued to rest against Kwaque's finger, "the older I
get the more convinced I am that there are too many ill-advised and hasty
operations."
Still fire and flesh pressed together, and a tiny spiral of smoke began
to arise from Kwaque's finger-end that was different in colour from the
smoke of a cigar-end.
"Now take that patient of Doctor Hadley's. I've saved him, not merely
the risk of an operation for appendicitis, but the cost of it, and the
hospital expenses. I shall charge him nothing for what I did. Hadley's
charge will be merely nominal. Doctor Granville, at the outside, will
cure his pyorrhea with emetine for no more than a paltry fifty dollars.
Yes, by George, besides the risk to his life, and the discomfort, I've
saved that man, all told, a cold thousand dollars to surgeon, hospital,
and nurses."
And while he talked on, holding Daughtry's eyes, a smell of roast meat
began to pervade the air. Doctor Emory smelled it eagerly. So did Miss
Judson smell it, but she had been warned and gave no notice. Nor did she
look at the juxtaposition of cigar and finger, although she knew by the
evidence of her nose that it still obtained.
"What's burning?" Daughtry demanded suddenly, sniffing the air and
glancing around.
"Pretty rotten cigar," Doctor Emory observed, having removed it from
contact with Kwaque's finger and now examining it with critical
disapproval. He held it close to his nose, and his face portrayed
disgust. "I won't say cabbage leaves. I'll merely say it's something I
don't know and don't care to know. That's the trouble. They get out a
good, new brand of cigar, advertise it, put the best of tobacco into it,
and, when it has taken with the public, put in inferior tobacco and ride
the popularity of it. No more in mine, thank you. This day I change my
brand."
So speaking, he tossed the cigar into a cuspidor. And Kwaque, leaning
back in the queerest chair in which he had ever sat, was unaware that the
end of his finger had been burned and roasted half an inch deep, and
merely wondered when the medicine doctor would cease talking and begin
looking at the swelling that hurt his side under his arm.
And for the first time in his life, and for the ultimate time, Dag
Daughtry fell down. It was an irretrievable fall-down. Life, in its
freedom of come and go, by heaving sea and reeling deck, through the home
of the trade-winds, back and forth between the ports, ceased there for
him in Walter Merritt Emory's office, while the calm-browed Miss Judson
looked on and marvelled that a man's flesh should roast and the man wince
not from the roasting of it.
Doctor Emory continued to talk, and tried a fresh cigar, and, despite the
fact that his reception-room was overflowing, delivered, not merely a
long, but a live and interesting, dissertation on the subject of cigars
and of the tobacco leaf and filler as grown and prepared for cigars in
the tobacco-favoured regions of the earth.
"Now, as regards this swelling," he was saying, as he began a belated and
distant examination of Kwaque's affliction, "I should say, at a glance,
that it is neither tumour nor cancer, nor is it even a boil. I should
say . . . "
A knock at the private door into the hall made him straighten up with an
eagerness that he did not attempt to mask. A nod to Miss Judson sent her
to open the door, and entered two policemen, a police sergeant, and a
professionally whiskered person in a business suit with a carnation in
his button-hole.
"Good morning, Doctor Masters," Emory greeted the professional one, and,
to the others: "Howdy, Sergeant;" "Hello, Tim;" "Hello, Johnson--when did
they shift you off the Chinatown squad?"
And then, continuing his suspended sentence, Walter Merritt Emory held
on, looking intently at Kwaque's swelling:
"I should say, as I was saying, that it is the finest, ripest,
perforating ulcer of the _bacillus leprae_ order, that any San Francisco
doctor has had the honour of presenting to the board of health."
"Leprosy!" exclaimed Doctor Masters.
And all started at his pronouncement of the word. The sergeant and the
two policemen shied away from Kwaque; Miss Judson, with a smothered cry,
clapped her two hands over her heart; and Dag Daughtry, shocked but
sceptical, demanded:
"What are you givin' us, Doc.?"
"Stand still! don't move!" Walter Merritt Emory said peremptorily to
Daughtry. "I want you to take notice," he added to the others, as he
gently touched the live-end of his fresh cigar to the area of dark skin
above and between the steward's eyes. "Don't move," he commanded
Daughtry. "Wait a moment. I am not ready yet."
And while Daughtry waited, perplexed, confused, wondering why Doctor
Emory did not proceed, the coal of fire burned his skin and flesh, till
the smoke of it was apparent to all, as was the smell of it. With a
sharp laugh of triumph, Doctor Emory stepped back.
"Well, go ahead with what you was goin' to do," Daughtry grumbled, the
rush of events too swift and too hidden for him to comprehend. "An' when
you're done with that, I just want you to explain what you said about
leprosy an' that nigger-boy there. He's my boy, an' you can't pull
anything like that off on him . . . or me."
"Gentlemen, you have seen," Doctor Emory said. "Two undoubted cases of
it, master and man, the man more advanced, with the combination of both
forms, the master with only the anaesthetic form--he has a touch of it,
too, on his little finger. Take them away. I strongly advise, Doctor
Masters, a thorough fumigation of the ambulance afterward."
"Look here . . . " Dag Daughtry began belligerently.
Doctor Emory glanced warningly to Doctor Masters, and Doctor Masters
glanced authoritatively at the sergeant who glanced commandingly at his
two policemen. But they did not spring upon Daughtry. Instead, they
backed farther away, drew their clubs, and glared intimidatingly at him.
More convincing than anything else to Daughtry was the conduct of the
policemen. They were manifestly afraid of contact with him. As he
started forward, they poked the ends of their extended clubs towards his
ribs to ward him off.
"Don't you come any closer," one warned him, flourishing his club with
the advertisement of braining him. "You stay right where you are until
you get your orders."
"Put on your shirt and stand over there alongside your master," Doctor
Emory commanded Kwaque, having suddenly elevated the chair and spilled
him out on his feet on the floor.
"But what under the sun . . . " Daughtry began, but was ignored by his
quondam friend, who was saying to Doctor Masters:
"The pest-house has been vacant since that Japanese died. I know the
gang of cowards in your department so I'd advise you to give the dope to
these here so that they can disinfect the premises when they go in."
"For the love of Mike," Daughtry pleaded, all of stunned belligerence
gone from him in his state of stunned conviction that the dread disease
possessed him. He touched his finger to his sensationless forehead, then
smelled it and recognized the burnt flesh he had not felt burning. "For
the love of Mike, don't be in such a rush. If I've got it, I've got it.
But that ain't no reason we can't deal with each other like white men.
Give me two hours an' I'll get outa the city. An' in twenty-four I'll be
outa the country. I'll take ship--"
"And continue to be a menace to the public health wherever you are,"
Doctor Masters broke in, already visioning a column in the evening
papers, with scare-heads, in which he would appear the hero, the St.
George of San Francisco standing with poised lance between the people and
the dragon of leprosy.
"Take them away," said Waiter Merritt Emory, avoiding looking Daughtry in
the eyes.
"Ready! March!" commanded the sergeant.
The two policemen advanced on Daughtry and Kwaque with extended clubs.
"Keep away, an' keep movin'," one of the policemen growled fiercely. "An'
do what we say, or get your head cracked. Out you go, now. Out the door
with you. Better tell that coon to stick right alongside you."
"Doc., won't you let me talk a moment?" Daughtry begged of Emory.
"The time for talking is past," was the reply. "This is the time for
segregation.--Doctor Masters, don't forget that ambulance when you're
quit of the load."
So the procession, led by the board-of-heath doctor and the sergeant, and
brought up in the rear by the policemen with their protectively extended
clubs, started through the doorway.
Whirling about on the threshold, at the imminent risk of having his skull
cracked, Dag Daughtry called back:
"Doc! My dog! You know 'm."
"I'll get him for you," Doctor Emory consented quickly. "What's the
address?"
"Room eight-seven, Clay street, the Bowhead Lodging House, you know the
place, entrance just around the corner from the Bowhead Saloon. Have 'm
sent out to me wherever they put me--will you?"
"Certainly I will," said Doctor Emory, "and you've got a cockatoo, too?"
"You bet, Cocky! Send 'm both along, please, sir."
* * * * *
"My!" said Miss Judson, that evening, at dinner with a certain young
interne of St. Joseph's Hospital. "That Doctor Emory is a wizard. No
wonder he's successful. Think of it! Two filthy lepers in our office to-
day! One was a coon. And he knew what was the matter the moment he laid
eyes on them. He's a caution. When I tell you what he did to them with
his cigar! And he was cute about it! He gave me the wink first. And
they never dreamed what he was doing. He took his cigar and . . . "