In White Raiment

Patients, however, were very few and far between.

“You see, I’m like the men in Harley Street, my dear old chap,” he observed one day, “I’m only consulted as a last resource.”

I did not feel quite comfortable in accepting his hospitality for more than a week; but when I announced my intention of departing he would not hear of it, and therefore I remained, each week eager for the publication of the Lancet with its lists of assistants wanted.

I had been with him three weeks, and assisted him in his extremely small practice, for he sometimes sought my advice as to treatment. Poor old Bob! he was never a very brilliant one in his diagnoses. He always made it a rule to sound everybody, feel their pulses, press down their tongues and make them say, “Ah?”

“Must do something for your money,” he would say when the patient had gone. “They like to be looked at in the mouth.”

One afternoon, while we were sitting together smoking in his little den above the surgery, he made a sudden suggestion.

“Do you know, Dick – I scarcely like to ask you – but I wonder whether you’d do me a favour?”

“Most certainly, old chap,” I responded.

“Even though you incur a great responsibility?”

“What is the responsibility?”

“A very grave one. To take charge of this extensive practice while I go down to Bristol and see my people. I haven’t been homesick a week.”

“Why, of course,” I responded. “I’ll look after things with pleasure.”

“Thanks. You’re a brick. I won’t be away for more than a week. You won’t find it very laborious. There’s a couple of kids with the croup round in Angel Road, a bedridden old girl in Bridge Road, and a man in Beadon Road who seems to have a perpetual stomach-ache. That’s about all.”

I smiled. He had not attempted to diagnose the stomach-ache, I supposed. He was, indeed, a careless fellow.

“Of course you’ll pocket all the fees,” he added, with a touch of grim humour. “They’re not very heavy – bobs and half-crowns – but they may keep you in tobacco till I come back.”

And thus I became the locum tenens of the not too extensive practice of Robert Raymond, surgeon, for he departed for Paddington on the following evening, and I entered upon my somewhat lonely duties.

The first couple of days passed without incident. I visited the two children with the croup, looked in upon the bedridden relict of a bibulous furniture-dealer, and examined the stomach with the perpetual pain. The latter proved a much more serious case than I had supposed, and from the first I saw that the poor fellow was suffering from an incurable disease. My visits only took an hour, and the rest of the day I spent in the little den upstairs, smoking furiously and reading.

On the third morning, shortly before midday, just as I was thinking of going out to make my round of visits, an unusual incident occurred.

I heard a cab stop outside, and a moment later the surgery bell was violently rung. I started, for that sound was synonymous with half a crown.

A middle-aged woman, in black, evidently a domestic servant, stood in the surgery, and, as I confronted her, asked breathlessly —

“Are you the doctor, sir?”

I replied in the affirmative, and asked her to be seated.

“I’m sorry to trouble you, sir,” she said, “but would you come round with me? My mistress has been taken worse.”

“What’s the matter with her?” I inquired.

“I don’t know, sir,” answered the woman, in deep distress, “But I do beg of you to come at once.”

“Certainly I will,” I said. And leaving her, ascended, put on my boots, and placing my case of instruments in my pocket, quickly rejoined her, and entered the cab in waiting.

On our drive along Hammersmith Road, and through several thoroughfares lying on the right, I endeavoured to obtain from her some idea of the nature of the lady’s ailment; but she was either stupidly ignorant, or else had received instructions to remain silent.

The cab at last pulled up before a fine grey house with a wide portico, supported by four immense columns, before which we alighted. The place, standing close to the entrance to a large square, was a handsome one, with bright flowers in boxes before the windows, and a striped sun-blind over the balcony formed by the roof of the portico. The quilted blinds were down because of the strong sun, but our ring was instantly answered by a grave-looking footman, who showed me into a cosy library at the end of the hall.

“I’ll tell my master at once that you are here, sir,” the man said. And he closed the door, leaving me alone.

Chapter Two

The Third Finger

The house was one of no mean order, and a glance at the rows of books showed them to be well chosen – evidently the valued treasures of a studious man. Upon the writing-table was an electric reading-lamp with green shade, and a fine, pale photograph of a handsome woman in a heavy silver frame. In the stationery rack upon the table the note-paper bore an embossed cipher surmounted by a coronet.

After a few moments the door re-opened, and there entered a very thin, pale-faced, slightly-built man of perhaps sixty, carefully dressed in clothes of rather antique cut. He threw out his chest in walking, and carried himself with stiff, unbending hauteur. His dark eyes were small and sharp, and his clean-shaven face rendered his aquiline features the more pronounced.

“Good morning,” he said, greeting me in a thin, squeaky voice. “I am very glad my servant found you at home.”

“And I, too, am glad to be of service, if possible,” I responded.

He motioned me to be seated, at the same time taking a chair behind his writing-table. Was it, I wondered, by design or by accident that in the position he had assumed his face remained in the deep shadow, while my countenance was within the broad ray of sunlight that came in between the blind and the window-sash? There was something curious in his attitude, but what it was I could not determine.

“I called you in to-day, doctor,” he explained, resting his thin, almost waxen hands upon the table, “not so much for medical advice as to have a chat with you.”

“But the patient?” I observed. “Had I not better see her first, and chat afterwards?”

“No,” he responded. “It is necessary that we should first understand one another perfectly.”

I glanced at him, but his face was only a grey blotch in the deep shadow. Of its expression I could observe nothing. Who, I wondered, was this man?

“Then the patient is better, I presume?”

“Better, but still in a precarious condition,” he replied, in a snapping voice. Then, after a moment’s pause, he added, in a more conciliatory tone, “I don’t know, doctor, whether you will agree with me, but I have a theory that, just as every medical man and lawyer has his fee, so has every man his price!”

“I scarcely follow you,” I said, somewhat puzzled. “I mean that every man, no matter what his station in life, is ready to perform services for another, providing the sum is sufficient in payment.”

I smiled at his philosophy. “There is a good deal of truth in that,” I remarked; “but of course there are exceptions.”

“Are you one?” he inquired sharply, in a strange voice.

I hesitated. His question was curious. I could not see his object in such observations.

“I ask you a plain question,” he repeated. “Are you so rich as to be beyond the necessity of money?”

“No,” I answered frankly. “I’m not rich.”

“Then you admit that, for a certain price, you would be willing to perform a service?” he said bluntly.

“I don’t admit anything of the kind,” I laughed, not, however, without a feeling of indignation.