FALSE COLORS
Lang caught this amazing introduction, and if he had been less wet,
less ruffled, less indignant, he would probably have instantly denied
it. As it was, he shut his mouth, and limply shook hands with the
three or four men who greeted him warmly.
He knew well the name of Doctor Robert Long, of course, and was
thoroughly acquainted with that eminent Chicago specialist’s success
in nervous diseases. The resemblance of the name to his own had caused
confusion before, and now he recollected that Doctor Long was said to
be spending a vacation in the South, and might really be in Mobile.
The humor of the thing suddenly quenched his wrath. He had been half
kidnaped, but he had turned the joke on his captors. Let them take
what they had got, he thought. He would look at their patient, charge
them nothing, and go ashore again, recommending a good Mobile
physician. He knew well that Doctor Long would never dream of
accepting any such casual call.
He glanced sharply at the men before him, and up and down the
steamer’s dim-lit deck. Scarred planking, dirty paint, rusty metal
confirmed his suspicions. Whatever this ship was, she surely was no
yacht. The man they called “Captain” stood at his elbow, tall,
rough-featured, mustached, dripping in his wet oilskins; and another,
dimly seen, showed a smooth face, owlish with large tortoise-shell
glasses. Carroll stood in front, looking anxiously on. They were all
waiting for him.
“Well, where’s the patient?” he said sharply.
At once they were all alert to serve him. They guided him down the
stairs to the saloon—a long, dingy, shabby cabin, with grimy white
paint, and the usual fixed table, chairs, and a number of stateroom
doors opening from either side. There was a strong odor of cigar smoke
and spirits.
“The doctor’s wet, Jerry. Give him a touch of something, can’t you?”
exclaimed Carroll, bustling to take Lang’s dripping raincoat. Before
Lang could decline, the captain had produced a couple of bottles from
a cupboard, and was pouring strong doses into a rack of glasses on the
table; and, in spite of the doctor’s abstinence, the rest of the
company swallowed their drinks with alacrity.
“Better have some, doctor. It’s the good stuff. We called at Havana
last week,” Carroll advised.
Lang again declined, and looked over the company as they drank
standing by the table. Jerry, the captain, was tall and lean, with a
long mouth, bad teeth, a truculent eye, and a seaman’s heavy, horny
hands. He with the big spectacles, Lloyd or Floyd, was a smooth-faced,
neatly dressed man of over thirty, cool and contemptuous looking.
Carroll looked more of a gentleman than the rest of them. It was an
odd company, this “yachting” crew, and Lang thought ironically of
Eva’s hope that this might be the beginning of a wealthy practice.
One of the doors opened just then, and another man came out, whom he
had not seen before. He came with silent swiftness like a cat,
glancing furtively at the newcomer. He was not over twenty, lean and
slouching, with a nervous hatchet face and a bad-colored skin. Lang
recognized that skin tint that comes of cocaine and heroin. He had
seen that type of youth occasionally in his hospital work, generally
in connection with bullet wounds. It was not a type likely to be found
at sea, he thought, the youthful dope-addicted gunman and gangster;
and his presence threw a point of light, perhaps, on the whole unusual
company.
Nobody introduced the young man, who slipped behind the table and
poured himself a drink, then lighted a cigarette. Carroll put down his
glass.
“This way, doctor,” he said, and reopened the door from which the
young gunman had just emerged. Lang followed him in, and the others
trooped after.
It was a rather large stateroom, painted white, with one berth, a
rattan chair, and the usual basin, taps and stand. The port was open,
letting in a cool, moist freshness; and Lang’s eyes instantly fixed on
the berth’s occupant.
It was a big man, a man of perhaps sixty, with a great, rugged face
and short, grizzled hair. His eyes were shut and sunken; he was
considerably emaciated; he seemed to be asleep. A gray blanket covered
him to the chin, and one huge, inanimate arm lay outside.
The physician’s instinct awoke in Lang as he bent over the cot. He
touched the wrist a moment, pushed back an eyelid to look at the
pupil, sniffed at the man’s lips, and took out his clinical
thermometer. While it rested under the patient’s armpit he felt
carefully over the skull in search of a possible wound.
“How long has he been like this?” he asked.
“Nearly a week now,” Carroll returned.
“How did it start? What brought it on? Did he have any injury—any
great shock?”
“No injury. You might call it a shock, perhaps,” said Carroll. “It was
ashore. He dropped like dead; we thought he _was_ dead, at first. We
brought him aboard, and now we’ve been expecting him to come to for
days.”
“Can you bring him to, doctor? We’ve got to have him brought to,” put
in the captain, anxiously.
“No, I can’t,” said Lang, crisply.
“He isn’t likely to die, is he?” asked Carroll.
“Extremely so.”
“Hell!” the captain exclaimed in disgust. “Can’t you do something to
revive him—electricity or some kind of stimulant? We’ll send ashore
for anything you need. We’ve got to wake him up, enough to talk a
little anyway, before he dies. That’s what we got you here for.”
“You want me to rouse him violently, if I can. What if it cost him his
life?” Lang asked quietly.
“Even at the risk of his life,” said Floyd with a sort of energetic
coldness.
Lang looked curiously at the speaker, who looked back unblinking.
“No physician would attempt such a thing,” he said. “I want to give
this man a thorough examination. The room’s too full. Clear it out.”
They went out obediently, and Lang sat down behind the closed door and
studied the unconscious figure afresh. It was not at all his special
sort of case; Long of Chicago would really have been the man, but he
knew well enough how to make his diagnosis.
He tested carefully the knee jerk, the ankle clonus, all the reflexes,
finding nothing out of the way; he took the pulse more carefully,
listened to the breathing, and then bared the body and went over the
whole surface of the skin. Several ribs had been broken within a few
months, he noted, and knitted rather badly; and he discovered a large,
fresh burn on the left arm, which he dressed. But these injuries could
not account for this prolonged coma, and he could find no trace of
others.
A tiny clot of blood on the brain surface might produce these
symptoms, but only the X-ray could discover it. It might be a purely
nervous case; a neurasthenia, a brain shock, such as is called shell
shock in war. He felt doubtful for he had made no special study of
these puzzling maladies.
And he wondered all at once why these men wished the patient to be
brought to speech, even at the risk of his life.
He was aroused from his deep thought by a gust of cold wind and mist
driving through the porthole. He went to close it, and saw at once
that the wind must have changed—or the steamer moved. With his hand on
the steel-ringed glass he paused, startled, for he could hear the
thrash and beat of the propeller astern, throbbing swiftly, and he
felt the vibration of the engines under his feet.
Perhaps they were heading landward, to put him ashore; but he felt a
deadly certainty that it was not so. He tried the door. It was locked
on the outside. He beat on the panels—louder—kicked the door and
shouted. But it was fully five minutes before the door was unfastened
and Carroll appeared.
“Where are we going? Are you going to land me? Let me pass!” Lang
exclaimed, furiously.
“Hold on, doctor. We can’t land you right now, but—— Hold on!”
Blindly angry, and half scared as well, Lang forced past him, crossed
the cabin, and rushed up to the deck.
It was dark. Spray and mist drove in the air and he could see nothing
overside, but from the force and freshness of the wind, and the salty
smell, and the sense of space, and the great heave and fall of the
ship, he knew instantly that they were no longer in Mobile Bay, but
well out to sea.
He found Carroll and the captain at his elbow, and Floyd came hurrying
from forward.
“You were to put me ashore at Mobile. You’re heading out into the
Gulf. Turn round at once and put me ashore!” Lang stormed.
“Don’t get excited, doctor. You’ll get ashore all right.”
“You wouldn’t leave a patient like this?”
“You’re all right here, and we’ll pay you well.”
These soothing remarks only infuriated Lang the more.
“You damned kidnapers!” he spluttered, and, his excitement getting out
of control, he drove a right-hand lunge at the man nearest him.
It was the captain, who dodged it neatly, laughing. Lang smashed out
at Carroll, who ducked. Three pairs of hands gripped the unfortunate
physician, and urged him toward the stairway again, in spite of his
kicks and struggles.
“Easy, doctor. You mustn’t beat up your officers,” they adjured him.
They were extraordinarily patient with him, though he kicked their
shins and struggled in an almost foaming rage. They piloted him down
the stair, through the saloon and into a stateroom, still directing
upon him a stream of the most mollifying speeches.
“We had your room all ready for you, doctor,” said Carroll, as they
held him pinioned in the middle of the floor. “Here’s your bag.
There’s pajamas laid out on the berth, and there’s ice water and rum
and soda water, and if you need anything more in the night, just shout
for it. You’ll be called for breakfast. Be calm.”
They left him with a chorus of cheerful “Good nights,” and he heard
the door bolt click on the outside.