Dr. O’Grady spoke the simple truth when he said that the people of
Clonmore had ceased to take any interest in Mr. Red and his household.
The election of an inspector of sheep dipping, a man from their own
midst to a post with a salary attached to it, was a far more exciting
thing than the eccentricity of a chance stranger. When the election was
over a new and more thrilling matter engaged their attention. Mr. Red
was entirely forgotten. The monotonous regularity of the visits of the
silent English servant to Jimmy O’Loughlin’s shop no longer attracted
attention. The equally monotonous regularity of his cash payments for
the goods he took away with him was extremely satisfactory to Jimmy
O’Loughlin, but gave absolutely no occasion for gossip. The man who
makes debts and does not pay them is vastly more interesting to his
neighbours than the morbidly honest individual who will not owe a penny.
Dr. O’Grady owed a good deal, and just at the time of Lord Manton’s
return to Clonmore, his money difficulties reached the point at which
they began to attract public attention. Like most good-humoured and
easy-going men, Dr. O’Grady lived beyond his income. There was a good
deal of excuse for him. He enjoyed, as dispensary doctor, a salary of
£120 a year. He received from Lord Manton an additional £30 for looking
after the health of the gardeners, grooms, indoor servants and others
employed about Clonmore Castle. He would have been paid extra guineas
for attending Lord Manton himself if the old gentleman had ever been
ill. He could count with tolerable certainty on two pounds a year for
ushering into the world young O’Loughlins. Nobody else in his district
ever paid him anything.
It is unquestionably possible to live on £152 a year. Many men,
curates for instance, live on less; face the world in tolerably
clean collars and succeed in looking as if they generally had enough
to eat. But Dr. O’Grady was not the kind of man who enjoys small
economies, and he had certain expensive tastes. He liked to have a
good horse between the shafts of a smart trap when he went his rounds.
He liked to see the animal’s coat glossy and the harness shining. He
preferred good whisky to bad, and smoked tobacco at 10_s._ 6_d._ a
pound. He was particular about the cut of his clothes and had a fine
taste in striped and spotted waistcoats. He also--quite privately,
for in the west of Ireland no one would admit that he threw away his
money wantonly--bought a few books every year. The consequence was
inevitable. Dr. O’Grady got into debt. At first, indeed for more than
two years, his debts, though they increased rapidly, did not cause any
uneasiness to his creditors. Then a suspicious tailor began to press
rudely for the payment of a long account. Other tradesmen, all of
them strangers who did not know Dr. O’Grady personally, followed the
tailor’s example. A Dublin gentleman of large fortune and philanthropic
tastes, a Mr. Lorraine Vavasour, having somehow heard of these
embarrassments, offered to lend Dr. O’Grady any sum from £10 to £1000
privately, without security, and on the understanding that repayment
should be made quite at the borrower’s convenience.
There was an agreeable settlement with the tailor who lost Dr.
O’Grady’s custom for ever, and with several others. Life for a time
was pleasant and untroubled. Then Mr. Lorraine Vavasour began to act
unreasonably. His ideas of the payment of instalments turned out to
be anything but suitable to Dr. O’Grady’s convenience. The good horse
was sold at a loss. The competent groom was replaced for an inferior
and cheaper man. Mr. Lorraine Vavasour showed no signs of being
propitiated by these sacrifices. He continued to harass his victim with
a persistency which would have made most men miserable and driven some
men to excessive drinking. Dr. O’Grady remained perfectly cheerful.
He had the temperament of an unconquerable optimist. He used even to
show Mr. Vavasour’s worst letters to Jimmy O’Loughlin, and make jokes
about them. This, as it turned out afterwards, was an unwise thing to
do. Jimmy himself had a long account against the doctor standing in his
books.
After awhile the miserable screw which succeeded the good horse in
Dr. O’Grady’s stable was sold. The smart trap and harness were sold.
The incompetent substitute for the groom was dismissed. Dr. O’Grady
endeavoured to do his work with no better means of getting about than
a dilapidated bicycle. It was generally known that his affairs had
reached a crisis. His housekeeper left him and engaged a solicitor
to write letters in the hope of obtaining the wages due to her. It
seemed very unlikely that she would get them. Mr. Lorraine Vavasour
was before her with a claim which the furniture of Dr. O’Grady’s house
would certainly not satisfy. Jimmy O’Loughlin was before her too.
He would have been willing enough to wait for years, and if left to
himself would not have driven a friend to extremities for the sake of
a few pounds. But when he saw that Mr. Vavasour meant to use all the
resources of the law against Dr. O’Grady he thought it a pity to let
a complete stranger get the little there was to get. He apologized to
Dr. O’Grady and summoned him before the County Court judge. The usual
things happened. The end appeared to be at hand, and the Board of
Guardians began to discuss the appointment of a new dispensary doctor.
It is very much to the credit of Dr. O’Grady that, under these
circumstances, he slept soundly at night in his solitary house; rose
cheerful in the morning and met his fellow-men with a smile on his
face. He continued to dine frequently at Clonmore Castle, and Lord
Manton noticed that his appetite improved instead of failing as his
troubles increased. In fact, Dr. O’Grady frequently went hungry at
this time, and Lord Manton’s dinners were almost the only solid meals
he got. Then, just before the bailiffs took possession of his house
a curious way of escape opened. It was at the beginning of August.
Dr. O’Grady spent the evening reading a new book about germ plasm,
pan-genesis, determinates, and other interesting things connected with
the study of heredity. He was obliged to go to bed early because his
lamp went out at ten o’clock and he had no oil with which to refill
it. Once in bed he went comfortably to sleep. At two o’clock in the
morning he was roused by a ponderous, measured knocking at his door. He
used the sort of language commonly employed by doctors who are roused
at unseemly hours. The knocking continued, a series of heavy detached
blows, struck slowly at regular intervals. Dr. O’Grady got up, put his
head out of the window, and made the usual inquiry--
“Who the devil’s that? And what do you want?”
“It is I. Guy Theodore Red.”
Even then, freshly roused from sleep, Dr. O’Grady was struck by the
answer he received. Very few men, in search of a doctor at two o’clock
in the morning, are so particular about grammar as to say, “It is
I!” And the words were spoken in a solemn tone which seemed quite
congruous with the measured and stately manner in which the door had
been hammered. Dr. O’Grady put on a pair of trousers and a shirt, ran
downstairs and opened the door. Mr. Red stood rigid like a soldier at
attention on the doorstep. In the middle of the road was the motor car
in which the English servant used to drive into Clonmore to do his
marketing.
“Is it typhoid?” said Dr. O’Grady; “for if it is I ought to have been
sent for sooner.”
“No.”
“It can’t be a midwifery case in your house?”
“No.”
“You’re very uncommunicative,” said Dr. O’Grady. “What is it?”
“A gun accident.”
“Very well. Why couldn’t you have said so before? Wait a minute.”
Dr. O’Grady hurried into his surgery, collected a few instruments
likely to be useful, some lint, iodoform, and other things. He stuffed
these into a bag, slipped on a few more clothes and an overcoat.
Then he left the house. He found Mr. Red sitting bolt upright in the
motor car with his hands on the steering wheel. Dr. O’Grady got in
beside him. During the drive Mr. Red did not speak a single word. He
did not even answer questions. Dr. O’Grady was left entirely to his
own thoughts. The fresh air had thoroughly awakened him, and, being
naturally a man of active mind, he thought a good deal. It occurred to
him at once that though gun accidents are common enough in the daytime
they very rarely occur in the middle of the night. Good men go to bed
before twelve o’clock, and no men, either good or bad, habitually clean
guns or go out shooting between midnight and two A.M. Dr. O’Grady began
to wonder how the accident had happened. It also struck him that Mr.
Red’s manners were peculiar. The man showed no sign of excitement. He
was not exactly rude. He was not, so far as Dr. O’Grady could judge, in
a bad temper. He was simply pompous, more pompous than any one whom Dr.
O’Grady had ever met before. He seemed to be obsessed with an idea of
his own enormous importance.
The impression was not removed when the car drew up at Rosivera.
Mr. Red blew three slow blasts on the horn, stepped out of the car,
stalked up to the door, and then stood, as he had stood in front of Dr.
O’Grady’s house, upright, rigid, his arms stretched stiffly along his
sides. The door was opened by the foreigner with the long black beard.
No word was spoken. Mr. Red raised his left hand and made some passes
in the air. His bearded friend raised his left hand and imitated the
passes with perfect solemnity. Mr. Red crossed the threshold, turned,
and solemnly beckoned to Dr. O’Grady to follow him.
“I see,” said the doctor, in a cheerful, conversational tone, “that you
are all Freemasons here. It’s an interesting profession. Or should I
call it a religion? I’m not one myself. I always heard it involved a
man in a lot of subscriptions to charities.”
Mr. Red made no reply. He crossed the hall, flung open a door with
a magnificent gesture, and motioned Dr. O’Grady to enter the
dining-room. The doctor hesitated for a moment. He was not a nervous
man, but he was startled by what he saw. The room was brightly lit with
four large lamps. The walls were hung with crimson cloth on which were
embroidered curious beasts, something like crocodiles, but with much
longer legs than crocodiles have, and with forked tongues. They were
all bright yellow, and stood out vividly from their crimson background.
“Enter,” said Mr. Red.
Dr. O’Grady faced the crocodiles. In the course of his medical
experience he had often met men who had seen such beasts in unlikely
places and been haunted by them unpleasantly; but his own conscience
was clear. He was strictly temperate, and he knew that the pictures on
the walls in front of him could not be a symptom of delirium. Mr. Red
followed him into the room and shut the door. It was painted crimson on
the inside, and a large yellow crocodile crawled across it.
“I suppose,” said Dr. O’Grady, “that you got leave from Lord Manton to
paper and paint the house. I dare say this sort of thing”--he waved his
hand towards the crocodile on the door, which was surrounded with a
litter of repulsive young ones--“is the latest thing in art; but you’ll
excuse my saying that it’s not precisely comfortable or soothing.
I hope you don’t intend to include one of those beasts in your new
statue.”
Mr. Red made no reply. He crossed the room, opened a cupboard, and
took out of it a bottle and some glasses. He set them on the table and
poured out some wine. Dr. O’Grady, watching his movements, was inclined
to revise the opinion that he had formed during the drive. Mr. Red was
not merely pompous. He was majestic.
“Drink,” said Mr. Red.
Dr. O’Grady looked at the wine dubiously. It was bright green. He was
accustomed to purple, yellow, and even white beverages. He did not like
the look of the stuff in the glass in front of him.
“If,” he said, “that is the liqueur which the French drink, absinthe,
or whatever they call it, I think I won’t venture on a whole claret
glass of it. I’m a temperate man, and I must keep my hand steady if
I’m to spend the rest of the night picking grains of shot out of your
friend.”
“Drink,” said Mr. Red again.
Dr. O’Grady felt that it was time to assert himself. He was a friendly
and good-tempered man, but he did not like being ordered about in
monosyllables.
“Look here,” he said, “I’m not a Freemason, or a Rosicrucian, or
an Esoteric Buddhist, or the Grand Llama of Thibet, or anything of
that kind. I don’t deny that your manner may be all right with other
sculptors, or with those who are initiated into your secrets, and I
dare say you have to live up to this thing in order to produce really
first-rate statues. But I’m only an ordinary doctor and I’m not
accustomed to it. If you have whisky or any other civilized drink, I
don’t mind taking a drop before I see the patient; but I’m not going
to run the risk of intoxicating myself with some strange spirit. And
what’s more, I’m not going to be talked to as if you were a newly
invented kind of automatic machine that can only utter one word at a
time and won’t say that unless a penny has been dropped into the slot.”
“Your fee,” said Mr. Red, laying an envelope on the table.
Dr. O’Grady took it up and opened it. It contained a ten pound Bank of
England note. His slight irritation passed away at once. Never before
in the course of his career as a doctor had he received so large a fee.
Then a sharp suspicion crossed his mind. A fee of such extravagant
amount must be meant to purchase something else besides his medical
skill. Men, even if they are as rich as Mr. Red appeared to be, even
if they have the eyes of a mad gander and an eccentric taste in house
decoration, do not pay ten pounds to a country doctor for dressing a
wound. Dr. O’Grady began to wonder whether he might not be called upon
to deal with the victim of some kind of foul play, whether he were
being paid to keep his mouth shut.
“Follow me,” said Mr. Red.
Dr. O’Grady followed him out of the dining-room and up two flights of
stairs. He made up his mind that his silence, supposing silence to be
possible, was worth more than ten pounds. He determined to keep Mr.
Red’s secret if it did not turn out to be a very gruesome one, but
to make Mr. Red pay handsomely. One hundred pounds was the amount he
fixed on. That sum, divided between Mr. Lorraine Vavasour and Jimmy
O’Loughlin, would pacify them both for a time.
Mr. Red stopped outside a bedroom door, and Dr. O’Grady saw on it four
large white letters, A.M.B.A. Mr. Red opened the door. On a bed at the
far end of the room lay the servant who used to drive into Clonmore and
buy things at Jimmy O’Loughlin’s shop. He was lying face downwards and
groaning.
“Exert your skill as a physician,” said Mr. Red, waving his hand in the
direction of the bed.
“Don’t you be a damneder ass than you can help,” said Dr. O’Grady
cheerfully.
He crossed the room and examined the man on the bed.
“Look here,” he said, turning to Mr. Red, “you told me that this man
was suffering from the result of an accident he had had with a gun.
Well, he isn’t. I defy any man to scorch the skin off the backs of both
his own legs with a gun. The thing simply couldn’t be done.”
“Exert your skill as a physician, and be silent,” said Mr. Red.
“You may fancy yourself to be the Cham of Tartary,” said Dr. O’Grady,
“or Augustus Cæsar, or Napoleon Bonaparte, or a Field Marshal in the
army of the Emperor of Abyssinia, but you’ve got to give some account
of how that man flayed the backs of his legs or else I’ll have the
police in here to-morrow.”
Mr. Red smiled, waved his hand loftily, and left the room.
Dr. O’Grady, his professional instinct aroused, proceeded to dress the
man’s wounds. They were not dangerous, but they were extremely painful,
and at first the doctor asked no questions. At length his curiosity
became too strong for him.
“How did you get yourself into such a devil of a state?” he asked.
The man groaned.
“It looks to me,” said Dr. O’Grady, “as if you’d sat down in a bath of
paraffin oil and then struck a match on the seat of your breeches. Was
that how it happened?”
The man groaned again.
“If it wasn’t that,” said Dr. O’Grady, “you must have tied a string
round your ankles, stuffed the legs of your trousers with boxes of
matches, and then rubbed yourself against something until they went
off. I can’t imagine anything else that could have got you into the
state that you’re in.”
“I was smoking,” said the man at last, “in the Chamber of Research.”
“In the what?”
“It’s what ’e calls it,” said the man. “I don’t know no other name for
it.”
“Perhaps the floor of the Chamber of Research was covered with
gunpowder behind where you were standing, and you dropped a lighted
match into it.”
“’Ow was I to know the stuff would go off?”
“If you knew it was gunpowder,” said Dr. O’Grady, “you might have
guessed it would go off if you dropped a match into it.”
“It weren’t gunpowder, not likely. It were some bloomin’ stuff ’e made.
’E’s always messing about making stuff, and none of it ever went off
before.”
“If you mean Mr. Red,” said Dr. O’Grady, “I can quite imagine that the
stuff he made wouldn’t go off. Unless, of course, it was intended not
to. From what I’ve seen of him so far, I should say that his notion
of manufacturing dynamite would be to take a hundredweight or so of
toothpowder, and say to it, ‘Powder, explode.’ Still, you ought to have
been more careful.”
“’E’s a damned ass,” said the man.
“He is,” said Dr. O’Grady. “Still, even an ass, if he goes on
experimenting for four months in a chamber specially set apart for
research, is sure to hit upon something that will explode by the end
of the time. By the way, do you happen to know where he got that
dining-room wall-paper with the crocodiles on it?”
The door opened and Mr. Red stalked into the room.
“Follow me,” he said to Dr. O’Grady.
“All right. I’ve finished with this fellow’s legs for the present. I’ll
call again to-morrow afternoon, or rather, this afternoon. He’ll get
along all right. There’s nothing to be frightened about. You may give
him a little beef-tea and---- Damn it all! Augustus Cæsar has gone!
Good-bye, my man. I’ll see you again soon. I must hurry off now. It
won’t do to keep the Field Marshal waiting. The crocodiles might get on
his nerves if he was left too long in the room alone with them.”