THE PRONOUNCEMENT
The clerk of the Shopton House with whom Tom had talked the previous
evening was standing in the doorway, grinning widely. He hailed the
younger fellow before the latter could put his first question:
“Hey, there, Swift! Looking for the Great Unknown?”
“That foreigner? Yes. Is he here?” demanded Tom.
“Just gone. Couldn’t stand us any longer. We don’t know how to make
coffee as they make it in some place he called Vienna. There’s no
Vienna in this state.”
“He means Vienna, Austria. Did he start for that place before
breakfast?”
“Well, maybe. Anyway, he got the boy to cart all his truck over to
the garage. He is going to leave town at once.”
“Not much he won’t, if he’s the man I think he is!” exclaimed Tom,
under his breath, and he started for the garage. “I ought to have
guessed it last night.”
The motor-car Tom had rescued on the road had been repaired and was
now standing by the curb. Its owner had hired another driver to take
him on his way. Big spectacles and all, the stranger was planted in
the back seat with his goods and chattels around him. He welcomed Tom
Swift with a sort of sour smile.
“They tell me you are an inventor and a young man of property,
yes—no?” began the peculiar man. “So it would be to insult you to
offer you pay for what you did for me last evening. Yes?”
“You can insult me by offering money, all right,” answered Tom. “But
I mean to exact payment for helping you.”
“Ach! Yes? Indeed? And how shall I pay you?”
“You are Dr. Raddiker!” exclaimed the young fellow.
“For sure. Dr. Simon Raddiker. Undt I mean to get away from this
place soon. What is your bill?”
“You came up here to consult with some doctors upon a case that is
puzzling them, did you not?”
“Not at all! Not at all!” cried the other. “I am on one vacation.
I am in no mood to consult mit dese country doctors. Ach! For why
should I work when it is a vacation I need?”
“But think of the sick man!” cried Tom almost angrily. “Suppose he
needs you?”
“I do not know that. I know nothing about it yet. Why should I
consider him?” and the scientist shrugged his shoulders. “What is he
to me?”
“He’s a good deal to me,” declared Tom Swift sternly. “You must pay
me for helping you out last night by seeing this man—Mr. Nestor.”
“Not so! Not so!” cried Dr. Raddiker, his eyes flashing behind
his huge spectacles. “Ach! You are like one of these American
bandits—yes? You say you will take what you want if I will not give
it cheerfully, yes? Ach!”
“That is the only way you can pay your bill,” declared Tom.
“Then the bill, it goes unpaid,” Raddiker almost snarled at him. To
the driver of the car he added: “Go on! I haf enough of this town. I
never want to see it again.”
The querulous, nervous, excited savant was doubtless an unhappy soul,
and he liked to make other people unhappy. He turned about as the car
started and cried:
“Gif my regards to the young lady. She was very nice and friendly
yet. She is the only nice person I meet since I come from New York.”
“Hold on!” commanded Tom. He leaped upon the running board and leaned
over and stopped the car in spite of the chauffeur. His eyes flashed
into those of the remarkable Dr. Raddiker.
“Hold on!” he repeated. “You speak of that girl. Do you know who she
is? It is her father who is dying and whom the doctors here want you
to visit. Can’t you do that much for the poor girl who was nice to
you?”
“You are telling me the truth—yes?” stammered Raddiker doubtfully.
“Tell this man to drive you to Mr. Nestor’s house. His daughter will
be there,” the young fellow replied.
“Vell! Vell!” agreed Raddiker. “Go on. We will try. But if you
deceive me—Ach!”
He was evidently very angry. Tom did not care how angry the man was
with him; he was determined he should fulfill his agreement with the
local doctors and examine Mr. Nestor.
Tom rode beside the chauffeur and the moment the car stopped at
the Nestor place he called Mary to the door and ran in himself and
had Mrs. Nestor call up the two doctors who had been attending her
husband.
Dr. Raddiker put the best face he could on a troublesome matter, now
that he saw Mary and knew that the patient was one in whom she had
an interest. Mary had quite charmed the grouchy savant. He stamped
into the house with one of his small bags, peering about through his
huge spectacles, and apparently criticising unfavorably everything
that he saw.
It was certain that he criticised everything the doctors in the
case had done and bluntly told them his small opinion of them when
they arrived in haste to meet him. But they knew Raddiker and his
unpleasant manners and accepted his diatribes in silence. One of
the local physicians afterward told Tom that he considered a man
with as keen a mind as the foreign doctor had the right to be as
ungentlemanly as he pleased.
“Not a bit!” cried the young inventor. “The greatest man in the world
could not be excused for using such language or displaying such a
mean spirit.”
However, in the matter of Mr. Nestor’s illness, the famous Dr.
Raddiker did his work well, being pressed to it by the circumstances.
Had it not been for Tom Swift he would have gone away disgruntled
from Shopton and refused to see the invalid.
But, as was the nature of the strange man, having once questioned the
other physicians and gained a full history of the case, he became
interested. And once he was interested in a puzzling problem, Dr.
Raddiker hung on to it like a bulldog to a bone!
He would not allow them to remove his automobile from before the
door, and it remained in readiness for departure. He was in just
as much haste as ever to leave the despised Shopton. But he stayed
beside Mr. Nestor’s bed for twelve hours, watching him, studying the
fluctuating symptoms of the disease, and finally late that night was
ready to give his diagnosis.
Having scolded the other doctors and having declared that no medicine
could aid the patient, Dr. Raddiker left to continue his “vacation”
after making a most strange pronouncement regarding the case. When
Tom Swift heard of it the next day he was inclined to believe that
the savant was quite as mad as he appeared to be.
“What’s that?” he cried. “You don’t mean he said _that_, Mary? That
your father must go to the Arctic? The man is mad! Maybe he expects
him to join some party in search of the Pole? Don’t tell me that
fellow is a scientist! He has escaped from a madhouse!”
But the physician had been serious. A change of climate was all that
would save Mr. Nestor. And a change to a very cold climate was the
change that would be most efficacious.
The local doctors were quite serious about it. The disease from which
Mr. Nestor suffered, when once named by Raddiker, was recognized
as a rare but well understood trouble. A few weeks in a climate of
keen frost might entirely eradicate the germs of the disease that had
stricken Mary’s father.
The treatment had been pointed out. To say “change of climate” was
all very well. But as Mary confessed to Tom, the way for such a
change seemed closed. Who was to go with Mr. Nestor on any such
journey?
He could not go alone. Mrs. Nestor was in such health herself that
the physicians would not recommend such a journey for her. In fact,
they forbade thought of it. Mary could not leave her mother.
“Besides, father could not be burdened with a girl,” she confessed to
Tom Swift. “He should have no responsibilities upon his mind but the
recovery of his own health. That Raddiker! He told us just enough to
stir us all up and add to our worriments. He told us how father might
be aided to health, but he does not point out the way for us to bring
it about. I declare, Tom, neither mother nor I has the first idea of
what we ought to do!”