“You may not,” said Gillespie.
“How are you, Conover?” said Kildare.
“I’m fair to middling, sir,” said Conover.
“Can I do anything to make him talk to me?” asked Kildare.
“The doctor ain’t taken a very full breakfast, sir,” said Conover. “Maybe if you was to wait till after lunch…”
“Conover, shut your mouth!” commanded Gillespie.
“Yes, sir,” agreed Conover. “If you was to wait up at the hotel till lunch time, Doctor Kildare…”
“The Messenger girl is back in the hospital, sir,” said Kildare. “She’s convinced that she has the same disease that killed her mother—a malignant tumour of the brain. The evidence is against that, but the fact is that something has made her blind.”
“Conover,” said Gillespie.
“Yes, sir,” replied the negro.
“Tell this damned interloper that I prefer to be alone.”
“The doctor says that he’d like to take a nap, sir; I’m sorry to say, sir,” interpreted Conover.
“If you possibly could spare the time to look at her,” said Kildare, “I will have her brought to you here, sir.”
“Conover!” roared Gillespie.
“Yes, sir?” asked Conover.
“Wheel me down the damned beach! Get me away from this.”
He turned the wheel chair as he spoke.
“Why don’t you go on, Conover, you jackass?” cried Gillespie.
“Doctor Kildare has gone got his hand on the back of the chair, sir.”
“A damned impertinent outrage!” said Gillespie. “Strike his hand away and march on.”
“I’m terribly sorry, sir,” said Conover. “Maybe I ain’t man enough to do that.”
“Did you wink at this fellow when you said that, Conover?” shouted Gillespie.
“Oh, no, sir!”
“You lie!” thundered Gillespie. “You’re a liar and the father of liars.”
“The best advice in the hospital, sir,” said Kildare, “is that the optic nerve seems entirely normal and the reactions show no signs of any deterioration of the corneal nerve. If you’ll permit me to bring her to you…”
“Conover!”
“I beg your pardon, Doctor Kildare,” said Conover.
“All right,” said Kildare.
The wheel chair began to move slowly over the sand, impelled by Conover.
“You don’t need me any longer, young Doctor Kildare,” cried Gillespie. “You don’t need the advice of any man. You’ve found your way into the long green that means so much to you. You can bed yourself down in it now! And God give you comfort in it. But don’t come with your whining questions to me again as long as you live!”
There was no answer.
“Are we far from him, Conover?” the diagnostician asked.
“Yes, sir.”
“Then get me back to the hotel and find out the next ferry for New York. Hurry, Conover! You black scoundrel, you’re fired. I won’t have you any longer. I’m going to get me a young man with some life in his legs and brains in his hands. You hear me?”
“Yes, sir,” said Conover.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
YOUNG Doctor Kildare stood in line and took his chances in front of that office door where he had so often assisted or presided. Conover said at last:
“You’re next, sir.”
And Kildare entered and found himself looking down into the formidably bent brows and eyes of Gillespie.
“What’s wrong with you?” demanded Gillespie.
“Nothing, sir.”
“Then get out! What do you think this is? A social hour, or what?”
Kildare backed slowly toward the door.
“I hoped that you’d be able to see my father, sir. His doctors think that there has been a coronary occlusion…”
“And what do you think?” demanded Gillespie.
“I feel that they’re wrong, sir.”
“Reasons, please. Feelings haven’t a damned thing to do with medicine.”
“I don’t presume to know. But if I were a practising doctor I would send the case to you, sir.”
Gillespie said: “Send him elsewhere. His name is against him here. Kildare, there once was a man who had twelve disciples. It was a tragedy when one of the twelve betrayed him. I have had one disciple. And that one betrayed me. Do you understand?”
“I understand,” said Kildare, and got out of the great man’s sight.
He stood in the waiting-room for a moment while his brain cleared. The voice of Mary Lamont said: “I don’t think that he meant it all, doctor.”
“He meant every word of it,” said Kildare.
“I told him what you have been doing in the experiment, and he was frightfully interested,” she said.
“Was he?” asked Kildare wearily. “Nevertheless, he despises me.”
“Will you let me try to explain?”
“No,” said Kildare. “Nobody can explain him to me. If I don’t know him, I know nothing. Mary, did he go to see Nancy Messenger?”
“Yes,” she said. “This morning.”
“Did he say anything?”
“Not a word.”
The day grew to the afternoon, and the interns of the big hospital sat in well-ordered rows before Gillespie, once more back on the job. Pens or pencils staggered rapidly across notebooks as the young doctors tried to keep pace with the outpourings of the great man. In the rearward row sat Kildare.
“…hysteria that can take the place of almost any disease,” he was saying. “There is a simulation that almost passes understanding. A feature is the glove anesthesia, which will begin in the hand and spread over it, a total senselessness to all impressions…we have cases of people struck mute, and people who suddenly grow deaf…The mind and the nervous system are the tyrants over the body.”
The elect among the interns generally sat up in front, close to the lecturer, making their notes. Toward the rear were those who came more from a sense of duty than in real hope to learn. From among these Kildare suddenly sprang to his feet, snatched the door open, and was gone from the room.
“Who the devil left this room? Who left that door open?” shouted Gillespie.
“It was Doctor Kildare, sir,” said an intern, hastily rising to close the door at the rear of the room.
“Ha?” said Gillespie. “He’s been doing a little deducing, has he? Well, brains will show themselves in spite of the devil.”
Kildare, opening the door of Nancy’s room a trifle, carefully beckoned Mary Lamont out to him into the hall. She had been sitting close to the bed of her patient, talking with animation.
“How is she?” asked Kildare.
“Much better. She’s eaten something. Her whole temper is better.”
“If you were the doctor, how would you describe her present condition, frankly?”
“I’d say that it’s a minor improvement in a hopeless case.”
“Would you?”
“Yes, doctor.”
“You were interesting her just now.”
“Yes, doctor.”
“What were you talking about?”
The answer came up in her eyes and stopped there without words. She flushed.
“Is it none of my business?” demanded Kildare.
“Yes, doctor.”
“Get Mr. Charles Herron on the telephone and ask him if he can come to the hospital at once to consult with me about Miss Messenger. If he can come; ask Landon and McKeever if they can give me a few moments at a conference. I’ll want Mr. Messenger also.”
“He’s always in the next room waiting for a call, doctor.”
“Is he? By the way, the great Carew probably would want to be at that conference. You might tell him.”