It was early morning in the same week; the crime doctor lay brooding
over the most complicated case that had yet come his way. More precisely
it was two cases, but so closely related that it took a strong mind to
consider them apart, a stronger will to confine each to the solitary
brain-cell that it deserved. Yet the case of young Laverick was not only
much the simpler of the two, but infinitely the more congenial to John
Dollar, and not the one most on his nerves.
It was too simple altogether. A year ago the boy had been all right,
wild only as a tobogganer, lucky to have got off with a few stitches in
his ear. Dollar heard all about that business from Doctor Alt, and only
too much about Jack Laverick's subsequent record from other informants.
It was worthy of the Welbeck Street confessional. His career at Oxford
had come to a sudden ignominious end. He had forfeited his motoring
license for habitually driving to the public danger, and on the last
occasion had barely escaped imprisonment for his condition at the wheel.
He had caused his own mother to say advisedly that she would "sooner
see him in his coffin than going on in this dreadful way"; in writing
she had said it, for Scarth had shown the letter addressed to him as her
"last and only hope" for Jack; and yet even Scarth was powerless to
prevent that son of Belial from getting "flown with insolence and wine"
more nights than not. Even last night it had happened, at the masked
ball, on the eve of this morning's races! Whose fault would it be if he
killed himself on the ice-run after all?
Dollar writhed as he thought upon this case; yet it was not the case
that had brought him out from England, not the reason of his staying out
longer than he had dreamed of doing when Alt's telegram arrived. It was
not, indeed, about Jack Laverick that poor Alt had telegraphed at all.
And yet between them what a job they could have made of the unfortunate
youth!
It was Dollar's own case over again--yet he had not been called
in--neither of them had!
Nevertheless, when all was said that could be said to himself, or even
to Alt--who did not quite agree--Laverick's was much the less serious
matter; and John Dollar had turned upon the other side, and was
grappling afresh with the other case, when his door opened violently
without a knock, and an agitated voice spoke his name.
"It's me--Edenborough," it continued in a hurried whisper. "I want you
to get into some clothes and come up to the ice-run as quick as
possible!"
"Why? What has happened?" asked the doctor, jumping out of bed as
Edenborough drew the curtains.
"Nothing yet. I hope nothing will----"
"But something has!" interrupted the doctor. "What's the matter with
your eye?"
"I'll tell you as you dress, only be as quick as you can. Did you forget
it was the toboggan races this morning? They're having them at eight
instead of nine, because of the sun, and it's ten to eight now. Couldn't
you get into some knickerbockers and stick a sweater over all the rest?
That's what I've done--wish I'd come to you first. They'll _want_ a
doctor if we don't make haste!"
"I wish you'd tell me about your eye," said Dollar, already in his
stockings.
"My eye's all right," returned Edenborough, going to the glass. "No, by
jove, it's blacker than I thought, and my head's still singing like a
kettle. I shouldn't have thought Laverick could hit so hard--drunk _or_
sober."
"That madman?" cried Dollar, looking up from his laces. "I thought he
turned in early for once in a way?"
"He was up early, anyhow," said Edenborough, grimly; "but I'll tell you
the whole thing as we go up to the run, and I don't much mind who hears
me. He's a worse hat even than we thought. I caught him tampering with
the toboggans at five o'clock this morning!"
"Which toboggans?"
"One of the lot they keep in a shed just under our window, at the back
of the hotel. I was lying awake and I heard something. It was like a
sort of filing, as if somebody was breaking in somewhere. I got up and
looked out, and thought I saw a light. Lucy was fast asleep; she is
still, by the way, and doesn't know a thing."
"I'm ready," said Dollar. "Go on when we get outside."
It was a very pale blue morning, not a scintilla of sunlight in the
valley, neither shine nor shadow upon clambering forest or overhanging
rocks. Somewhere behind their jagged peaks the sun must have risen, but
as yet no snowy facet winked the news to Winterwald, and the softer
summits lost all character against a sky only less white than
themselves.
The village street presented no difficulties to Edenborough's gouties
and the doctor's nails; but there were other people in it, and voices
travel in a frost over silent snow. On the frozen path between the
snow-fields, beyond the village, nails were not enough, and the novice
depending upon them stumbled and slid as the elaborated climax of
Edenborough's experience induced even more speed.
"It was him all right--try the edge, doctor, it's less slippy. It was
that young brute in his domino, as if he'd never been to bed at all, and
me in my dressing-gown not properly awake. We should have looked a funny
pair in--have my arm, doctor."
"Thanks, George."
"But his electric lamp was the only light. He didn't attempt to put it
out. 'Just tuning up my toboggan,' he whispered. 'Come and have a
look.' I didn't and don't believe it was his own toboggan; it was
probably that Captain Strong's, he's his most dangerous rival; but, as I
tell you, I was just going to look when the young brute hit me full in
the face without a moment's warning. I went over like an ox, but I think
the back of my head must have hit something. There was daylight in the
place when I opened the only eye I could."
"Had he locked you in?"
"No; he was too fly for that; but I simply couldn't move till I heard
voices coming, and then I only crawled behind a stack of garden chairs
and things. It was Strong and another fellow--they did curse to find the
whole place open! I nearly showed up and told my tale, only I wanted to
tell you first."
"I'm glad you have, George."
"I knew your interest in the fellow--besides, I thought it was a case
for you," said George Edenborough simply. "But it kept me prisoner till
the last of the toboggans had been taken out--I only hope it hasn't made
us too late!"
His next breath was a devout thanksgiving, as a fold in the glistening
slopes showed the top of the ice-run, and a group of men in sweaters
standing out against the fir-trees on the crest. They seemed to be
standing very still. Some had their padded elbows lifted as though they
were shading their eyes. But there was no sign of a toboggan starting,
no sound of one in the invisible crevice of the run. And now man after
man detached himself from the group, and came leaping down the
subsidiary snow-track meant only for ascent.
But John Dollar and George Edenborough did not see all of this. A yet
more ominous figure had appeared in their own path, had grown into
Mostyn Scarth, and stood wildly beckoning to them both.
"It's Jack!" he shouted across the snow. "He's had a smash--self and
toboggan--flaw in a runner. I'm afraid he's broken his leg."
"Only his leg!" cried Dollar, but not with the least accent of relief.
The tone made Edenborough wince behind him, and Scarth in front look
round. It was as though even the crime doctor thought Jack Laverick
better dead.
He lay on a litter of overcoats, the hub of a wheel of men that broke of
itself before the first doctor on the scene. He was not even
insensible, neither was he uttering moan or groan; but his white lips
were drawn away from his set teeth, and his left leg had an odd look of
being no more a part of him than its envelope of knickerbocker and
stocking.
"It's a bu'st, doctor, I'm afraid," the boy ground out as Dollar knelt
in the snow. "Hurting? A bit--but I can stick it."
Courage was the one quality he had not lost during the last year; nobody
could have shown more during the slow and excruciating progress to the
village, on a bobsleigh carried by four stumbling men; everybody was
whispering about it. Everybody but the crime doctor, who headed the
little procession with a face in keeping with the tone which had made
Edenborough wince and Scarth look round.
The complex case of the night--this urgent one--both were forgot in
Dollar's own case of years ago. He was back again in another Winterwald,
another world. It was no longer a land of Christmas-trees growing out of
mountains of Christmas cake; the snow melted before his mind's eye; he
was hugging the shadows in a street of toy-houses yielding resin to an
August sun, between green slopes combed with dark pines, under a sky of
intolerable blue. And he was in despair; all Harley Street could or
would do nothing for him. And then--and then--some forgotten ache or
pain had taken him to the little man--the great man--down this very
turning to the left, in the little wooden house tucked away behind the
shops.
How he remembered every landmark--the handrail down the slope--the
little porch--the bare stairs, his own ladder between death and
life--the stark surgery with its uncompromising appliances in full view!
And now at last he was there with such another case as his own--the
minor case that he had yet burned to bring there--and there was Alt to
receive them in the same white jacket and with the same simple
countenance as of old!
They might have taken him on to the hotel, as Scarth indeed urged
strongly; but the boy himself was against another yard, though otherwise
a hero to the end.
"Chloroform?" he cried faintly. "Can't I have my beastly leg set without
chloroform? You're not going to have it off, are you? I can stick
anything short of that."
The two doctors retired for the further consideration of a point on
which they themselves were not of one mind.
"It's the chance of our lives, and the one chance for him," urged Dollar
vehemently. "It isn't as if it were such a dangerous operation, and I'll
take sole responsibility."
"But I am not sure you have been right," demurred the other. "He has not
even had concussion, a year ago. It has been only the ear."
"There's a lump behind it still. Everything dates from when it happened;
there's some pressure somewhere that has made another being of him. It's
a much simpler case than mine, and you cured me. Alt, if you had seen
how his own mother wrote about him, you would be the very last man to
hesitate!"
"It is better to have her consent."
"No--nobody's--the boy himself need never know. There's a young bride
here who'll nurse him like an angel and hold her tongue till doomsday.
She and her husband may be in the secret, but not another soul!"
And when Jack Laverick came out of chloroform, to feel a frosty
tickling under the tabernacle of bedclothes in which his broken bone was
as the Ark, the sensation was less uncomfortable than he expected. But
that of a dull deep pain in the head drew his first complaint, as an
item not in the estimate.
"What's my head all bandaged up for?" he demanded, fingering the turban
on the pillow.
"Didn't you know it was broken, too?" said Lucy Edenborough gravely. "I
expect your leg hurt so much more that you never noticed it!"