DR. DUTHIL
Thénard, with his case-book and a bundle of papers under his arm, stood
for a moment in thought. Then he suddenly raised his chin.
"How would you like to go on a big-game shooting expedition to the
Congo?"
"Ask a child would it like pie," said the American, speaking in English.
Then, in French, "Immensely, monsieur. Only it is impossible."
"Why?"
"Money."
"Ah, that's just it," said Thénard. "A patient of mine, Captain Berselius,
is starting on a big-game shooting expedition to the Congo. He requires a
medical man to accompany him, and the salary is two thousand francs a
month and all things found----"
Adams's eyes lit up.
"Two thousand a month!"
"Yes; he is a very rich man. His wife is a patient of mine. When I was
visiting her yesterday the Captain put the thing before me--in fact, gave
me _carte blanche_ to choose for him. He requires the services of a
medical man--an Englishman if possible----"
"But I'm an American," said Adams.
"It is the same thing," replied Thénard, with a little laugh. "You are all
big and strong and fond of guns and danger."
He had taken Adams by the arm and was leading him down the passage toward
the entrance hall of the hospital.
"The primitive man is strong in you all, and that is why you are so vital
and important, you Anglo-Saxons, Anglo-Celts, and Anglo-Teutons. Come in
here."
He opened the door of one of the house-surgeon's rooms.
A youngish looking man, with a straw-coloured beard, was seated before the
fire, with a cigarette between his lips.
He rose to greet Thénard, was introduced to Adams, and, drawing an old
couch a bit from the wall, he bade his guests be seated.
The armchair he retained himself. One of the legs was loose, and he was
the only man in the Beaujon who had the art of sitting on it without
smashing it. This he explained whilst offering cigarettes.
Thénard, like many another French professor, unofficially was quite one
with the students. He would snatch a moment from his work to smoke a
cigarette with them; he would sometimes look in at their little parties. I
have seen him at a birthday party where the cakes and ale, to say nothing
of the cigarettes and the unpawned banjo, were the direct products of a
pawned microscope. I have seen him, I say, at a party like this, drinking
a health to the microscope as the giver of all the good things on the
table--he, the great Thénard, with an income of fifteen to twenty thousand
pounds a year, and a reputation solid as the four massive text-books that
stood to his name.
"Duthil," said Thénard, "I have secured, I believe, a man for our friend
Berselius." He indicated Adams with a half laugh, and Dr. Duthil, turning
in his chair, regarded anew the colossus from the States. The great,
large-hewn, cast-iron visaged Adams, beside whom Thénard looked like a
shrivelled monkey and Duthil like a big baby with a beard.
"Good," said Duthil.
"A better man than Bauchardy," said Thénard.
"Much," replied Duthil.
"Who, then, was Bauchardy?" asked Adams, amused rather by the way in which
the two others were discussing him.
"Bauchardy?" said Duthil. "Why, he was the last man Berselius killed."
"Silence," said Thénard, then turning to Adams, "Berselius is a perfectly
straight man. On these hunting expeditions of his he invariably takes a
doctor with him; he is not a man who fears death in the least, but he has
had bitter experience of being without medical assistance, so he takes a
doctor. He pays well and is entirely to be trusted to do the right thing,
as far as money goes. On that side the contract is all right. But there is
another side--the character of Berselius. A man, to be the companion of
Captain Berselius, needs to be big and strong in body and mind, or he
would be crushed by the hand of Captain Berselius. Yes, he is a terrible
man in a way--_un homme affreux_--a man of the tiger type--and he is going
to the country of the big baboons, where there is the freedom of action
that the soul of such a man desires----"
"In fact," said Adams, "he is a villain, this Captain Berselius?"
"Oh, no," said Thénard, "not in the least. Be quiet, Duthil, you do not
know the man as I do. I have studied him; he is a Primitive----"
"An Apache," said Duthil. "Come, dear master, confess that from the moment
you heard that this Berselius was intent on another expedition, you
determined to throw a foreigner into the breach. 'No more French doctors,
if possible,' said you. Is not that so?"
Thénard laughed the laugh of cynical confession, buttoning his overcoat at
the same time and preparing to go.
"Well, there may be something in what you say, Duthil. However, there the
offer is--a sound one financially. Yes. I must say I dread that two
thousand francs a month will prove a fatal attraction, and, if Mr. Adams
does not go, some weaker man will. Well, I must be off."
"One moment," said Adams. "Will you give me this man's address? I don't
say I will take the post, but I might at least go and see him."
"Certainly," replied Thénard, and taking one of his own cards from his
pocket, he scribbled on the back of it--
CAPTAIN ARMAND BERSELIUS
14 AVENUE MALAKOFF
Then he went off to a consultation at the Hotel Bristol on a Balkan
prince, whose malady, hitherto expressed by evil living, had suddenly
taken an acute and terrible turn and Adams found himself alone with Dr.
Duthil.
"That is Thénard all over," said Duthil. "He is the high priest of
modernism. He and all the rest of the neurologists have divided up
devilment into provinces, and labelled each province with names all ending
in _enia_ or _itis_. Berselius is a Primitive, it seems; this Balkan
prince is--I don't know what they call him--sure to be something Latin,
which does not interfere in the least with the fact that he ought to be
boiled alive in an antiseptic solution. Have another cigarette."
"Do you know anything special against Captain Berselius?" asked Adams,
taking the cigarette.
"I have never even seen the man," replied Duthil, "but from what I have
heard, he is a regular buccaneer of the old type, who values human life
not one hair. Bauchardy, that last doctor he took with him, was a friend
of mine. Perhaps that is why I feel vicious about the man, for he killed
Bauchardy as sure as I didn't."
"Killed him?"
"Yes; with hardship and overwork."
"Overwork?"
"_Mon Dieu_, yes. Dragged him through swamps after his infernal monkeys
and tigers, and Bauchardy died in the hospital at Marseilles of spinal
meningitis, brought on by the hardships of the expedition--died as mad as
Berselius himself."
"As mad as Berselius?"
"Yes; this infernal Berselius seemed to have infected him with his own
hunting fever, and Bauchardy--_mon Dieu_, you should have seen him during
his illness, shooting imaginary elephants, and calling for Berselius."
"What I want to get at is this," said Adams. "Was Bauchardy driven into
these swamps you speak of, and made to hunt against his will--treated
cruelly, in fact--or did Berselius take his own share of the hardships?"
"His own share! Why, from what I can understand, he did all the hunting. A
man of iron with the ferocity of a tiger--a very devil, who made others
follow him as poor Bauchardy did, to his death----"
"Well," said Adams, "this man interests me somehow, and I intend to have a
look at him."
"The pay is good," said Duthil, "but I have warned you fully, if Thénard
hasn't. Good evening."
The Rue Dijon, where Adams lived, was a good way from the Beaujon. He made
his way there on foot, studying the proposition as he went.
The sporting nature of the proposal coming from the sedate Thénard rather
tickled him.
"He wants to pit me against this Berselius," said Adams to himself, "same
as if we were dogs. That's the long and short of it. Yes, I can understand
his meaning in part; he's afraid if Berselius engages some week-kneed
individual, he'll give the weak-kneed individual more than he can take. He
wants to stick a six-foot Yankee in the breach, instead of a five-foot
froggie, all absinthe and cigarette ends. Well, he was frank, at all
events. Hum, I don't like the proposition--and yet there's
something--there's something--there's something about it I _do_ like. Then
there's the two thousand francs a month, and not a penny out of pocket,
and there's the Congo, and the guggly-wuggly alligators, and the great big
hairy apes, and the feel of a gun in one's hand again. Oh, my!"
"All the same, it's funny," he went on, as he drew near the Boulevard St.
Michel. "When Thénard spoke of Berselius there was something more than
absence of friendship in his tone. Can old man Thénard have a down on this
Berselius and does he in his heart of hearts imagine that by allotting P.
Quincy Adams to the post of physician extraordinary to the expedition, he
will get even with the Captain? My friend, remember that hymn the English
Salvationists were yelling last Sunday outside the American Presbyterian
Church in the Rue de Berry--'Christian, walk carefully, danger is near.'
Not a bad motto for Paris, and I will take it."
He walked into the _Café d'Italie_, which, as everyone knows, is next to
Mouton's, the pork shop, on the left-hand side of the Boul' Miche, as you
go from the Seine; called for a boc, and then plunged into a game of
dominoes with an art student in a magenta necktie, whom he had never met
before, and whom, after the game, he would, a million to one, never meet
again.
That night, when he had blown out his candle, he reviewed Thénard's
proposition in the dark. The more he looked at it the more attraction it
had for him, and--"Whatever comes of it," said he to himself, "I will go
and see this Captain Berselius to-morrow. The animal seems worth the
trouble of inspection."