JERRY AND THE DOCTOR.
“I don’t see how I can get there in time to be of any service,” Dr. Rand
went on. “I’ll start and walk of course.”
“I have a better plan!” cried Jerry suddenly. “Hitch up your horse, and
bring two planks along.”
“But, my boy, you can’t get a horse and carriage across on two narrow
planks.”
“I’m not going to try,” responded Jerry. “Please do as I say, doctor.
We must lose no time. Get the planks and hitch up, please. I’ll get you
over the bridge.”
Soon the rig was ready. The boards stuck out ahead and behind the
carriage, in which the doctor seated himself with his driver. While
the boy rode his machine to the bridge the doctor urged the horse to a
gallop, and soon the structure was reached.
“Now what is your plan, Jerry?”
“I’ll show you, sir. Quick, get out the planks and lay them over the
gap.”
The driver soon had the two boards in position. They formed a narrow and
not very steady temporary bridge over where the black water showed below
the missing span.
“Can you walk across, doctor?” inquired Jerry.
“I guess so, my head is pretty steady,” was the reply.
“Then cross, and I’ll follow with my machine,” said the boy.
It took the doctor but a few seconds to cross the planks, carrying his
medicine case. Then Jerry, pushing his machine on one plank, and walking
on the other, joined the physician.
“Tell your driver to come back for you in about two hours,” suggested
Jerry. “If the lady is going to get better I guess you can safely leave
by that time.”
“Well, you seem to have the matter all planned,” said the doctor
smiling, as he called the order to his driver. “But still I don’t see
how I am to get to Mrs. Johnson’s unless I walk.”
“You’re going on my motor cycle,” said Jerry. “You can stand on the back
step, and hold on to me. This machine will carry two.”
“All right,” agreed the physician. “I must take the risk, I guess.”
“Well, you won’t be taking any more of a risk than that youngster did,
doc,” interrupted a voice, and the man who had warned Jerry came up. He
had several planks with him.
“I watched him shoot across that gap,” he went on, “and it made me
shiver. I thought sure he’d be killed. I hollered at him to wait, as I
had some planks, but I guess he didn’t hear me.”
“I heard somebody, but I couldn’t stop,” Jerry said.
“And do you mean to say you leaped across that missing span?” asked the
doctor.
“That’s what he done, doc,” said the man. “It was as nervy a thing as I
ever seen, and I never seen it outside of a circus.”
“It wasn’t anything,” said Jerry modestly. “I had to get across, and
that was the only way. But we are wasting time. Come on, doctor.”
So, with a nervous dread in his heart, the physician got on the rear
step, and clasped Jerry about the shoulders.
“Give us a start,” Jerry asked of the countryman, for the boy found
it hard to pedal the machine up grade with the added weight of his
passenger.
The shove gave the motor start enough so that Jerry could turn on the
power, and then he rode off, bearing the much-needed physician. In a
comparatively short time they reached the Johnson house.
“Oh, I’m so glad you came, doctor!” exclaimed the woman’s husband. “I’m
afraid you’re too late though.”
“We’ll see,” said the physician cheerfully, as he dismounted from the
rather uncomfortable step and hurried into the house.
While the doctor found that Mrs. Johnson was in much pain and suffering,
he soon discovered that she was not in danger of immediate death, though
her symptoms were alarming enough to cause herself and her husband much
fear. The physician was able to afford some relief, and in about an hour
the woman was much better, and, so the physician said, on the road to
recovery.
“But I only got here just in time,” the physician remarked. “If she had
suffered from such great pain much longer it would have weakened her
heart so that the results might have been serious. You owe a great deal
to this brave boy, Mr. Johnson. Only for him, and for his ingenuity in
getting me here, the case might have had a different ending.”
“I realize that,” said the man, “and I can’t thank him enough. The other
two boys aided me also. I don’t know what I would have done without
them. They helped me heat water and in other ways. I am sure I’ll never
forget it.”
After seeing that his patient was as comfortable as possible the
physician said he would return home.
“I’ll send you as far as the bridge in a carriage,” proposed Mr.
Johnson. “That is if one of these boys can drive you and bring the rig
back. I don’t feel like leaving Mrs. Johnson yet.”
“I’ll drive,” volunteered Ned.
So he hitched up a horse and soon the doctor was ready to go, saying he
would call again the next day.
“You boys had better stay here all night,” invited Mr. Johnson. “I’ll be
glad to have you, and it’s so late now you can’t get to Cresville.”
“What will our folks say?” asked Bob. “You know they might worry if we
didn’t come home.”
“There is a telegraph station not far from my house,” put in Dr. Rand.
“A message can be sent to Cresville from there.”
So it was arranged. Ned drove the doctor back, and found that in the
meantime the bridge had been repaired so that the passage was safer,
though a horse could not be driven over it. The physician promised to
send the message to the boys’ parents, and, leaving Ned, Dr. Rand walked
across the planks, got in his own carriage and drove home, while Ned
made his way back to Mr. Johnson’s.
The sick woman continued to improve and soon was much better. Mr.
Johnson secured the services of some women neighbors who were brought
to his house by Ned in the carriage, and arrangements were made for the
boys to spend the night.
The next morning Mrs. Johnson was so much better that she insisted on
sitting up and having a talk with the three boys, whose coming was so
fortunate for her. She had high praise for them, especially for Jerry,
who blushed like a girl.
“I hear you all come from Cresville,” said Mrs. Johnson. “Isn’t that
where a mill was robbed not long ago?”
“Some one took one thousand dollars from Mr. Judson’s place,” answered
Ned, wondering what was coming.
“I think the thieves must have got some of my money.”
“Your money? What do you mean?” asked Ned. “I thought it was all Mr.
Judson’s.”
“It was. I mean that I paid a bill at the mill the afternoon of the
night the robbery took place. Mr. Judson took my money, together with
some other that he had in a box, and locked it all in the safe. It was
quite late, and he said that he would not have time to go to the bank.”
“Oh!” cried Ned. “Then some of the money you paid was taken, for it was
the very money that Mr. Judson didn’t take to the bank that was stolen.”
“Then there ought to be a clue to the thief,” went on Mrs. Johnson.
“How?” asked Jerry.
“Because with the money I paid was a queer looking bill,” said the
woman. “It was from some Massachusetts state bank, instead of a national
note, and it had a funny mark on it.”
“Do you remember what that mark was?” asked Ned, while the other boys
waited in breathless silence.
“I remember it very well,” said Mrs. Johnson. “There was a monogram
of three letters. I recall them very distinctly because they were the
initials of my brother’s name. He is dead, so of course he could not
have put them on the bill, but some one with the same initials did.”
“And what were the letters?” asked Jerry.
“They were H. R. C.,” was the answer.
The boys, who recalled the initials on the queer bill that Paul Banner
had received from Noddy Nixon, were too startled to reply. They did not
know what to say.
“That certainly ought to furnish a clue,” said Jerry at length, making
a sign to Ned and Bob to say nothing. “But the police do not know that;
or, if they do, they have made nothing of it.”
“I think I’ll write and tell them,” said Mrs. Johnson. “It seems a shame
for Mr. Judson to lose all that money.”
“Perhaps that would be a good plan,” Jerry said quietly. “What was the
value of the queer bill?”
“It was a ten dollar note,” replied Mrs. Johnson.
After some further conversation the boys, finding there was nothing
more they could do, decided they had better start for home. They were
prevailed on, however, to remain for dinner and, shortly after that
meal, the doctor having come in the meanwhile and pronouncing Mrs.
Johnson out of danger, the three chums motored to Cresville, where they
arrived at dusk.