The Doctor’s Patient
SO LIMITED WAS the scope of Dr. Mulray’s practice that to receive a night call was unusual. He was awakened by a persistent knocking when the dawn was breaking on a new day of high wind blowing coldly from the south.
The doctor’s bedroom was the front room, left of the tiny hall; his study-cum-consulting room was opposite. He was, therefore, not difficult to awaken by the knocking on his front door in a township where electric lighting and bells were notably absent. The temperature this early morning was lower than it had been for weeks. With the fall, the wind’s power over the sand particles had waned to vanishing point. The air was bracing, even in the doctor’s bedroom, and as he heaved himself off the bed, Dr. Murray knew that while he had slept a cool change had arrived.
“All right! All right! I’m coming!” he shouted when the knocking continued. Breathing heavily, the old man struggled into a worn dressing-gown, picked up the oil lamp he had lit, and thudded out to the hall and the front door. The wind caused the lamp to flicker badly, but standing outside he saw the burly Constable Lee and the much smaller Joseph Fisher.
“Admit us, please, doctor. I am in need of your services,” urged Bony. The tones of his voice caused the doctor to stoop to glare at him, and then he abruptly straightened and turned to the study door.
“Come in and let me have a look at you. Shut the door, Lee,” he commanded. Within the study, having put down the lamp, he watched the detective lurch into the room, and then gently assisted him into one of the two old but comfortable leather armchairs.
“Humph!” he grunted, not unkindly. “What has happened?”
Bony, looking up into the weather-beaten, pendulous face, stretched his neck.
“I have been within an ace of death,” he said with difficulty. “The Strangler attacked me while on Nogga Creek. Please examine my throat, doctor. Then, perhaps, a sedative…”
“Ah!” The exclamation was expressive. “Don’t you talk any more till I sayso. Know anything about this, Lee?”
Dr. Mulray had unfastened the pin at Bony’s coat-collar and was already examining his neck while he was taking the detective’s pulse.
“No, doctor,” replied Constable Lee. “This man has just roused me out and asked me to bring him to you.”
“Humph! Anobbier of brandy with a plentiful dash of milk, Lee. Brandy in the sideboard cupboard. Milk in the cooler on the back veranda. Get it, please. Now then, Joe! We’ll have your coal and shirt off. The strangling brute got you, did he? I knew damned well that that fool of a Simone arrested the wrong man. Humph! Ah! Yes! Humph! Your coat-collar saved your neck from external laceration, Joe. There is only faintecchymosis. I doubt that you could articulate if the hyoid bone was fractured, as it was in the cases of Tindall and Marsh. Mabel Storrie’s windpipe was split in two places, so I have heard from Adelaide. I can’t tell the condition of your windpipe without X-rays, but I am hopeful that you have escaped that most serious injury. Mabel had no clothing protecting her throat. Neither had the other two. Ah, good, Lee! Here, Joe, sip this brandy and milk. Take your time. You, Lee, help yourself to a bracer.”
“Thank you,” Bony murmured weakly. “I’ll be better presently. Fright, you know.”
“ ‘Shock’is the correct word for your mental condition,” argued the doctor. “I know; you don’t. You will stay here today. I have a spare room. You will go to bed now. Think you can walk with assistance? Help him, Lee. I’ll show you the way.”
While the policeman was helping Bony to his feet the doctor rushed out of the room, across the hall and to his own bedroom, from which he appeared a moment afterwards with a clean pair of pyjamas. Taking up the lamp from the study table, he directed Lee and the patient along the short passage to a rear bedroom.
“Did the brandy sting more than usually?” asked Mulray.
Bony shook his head.
“Good! It augurs well for your windpipe. Those neck muscles will be bruised. I’ll foment ’em. Then the needle, my boy, and a long sleep. Lee, hurry out to the kitchen and get the fire going. I want hot water, and plenty of it.”
Brisk, efficient, cool and immense. Dr. Mulray attended to Bony as gently as he might have attended a duke. He had the half-caste undressed and inside his spare pyjamas before Lee could appear with the hot water, and when Bony lay luxuriously between sheets he asked the old man:
“You insist that I stay here?”
“Of course! Think I am suggesting that you run up and down the street? How did you get here from Nogga Creek?”
“Walked-when I wasn’t lying down.”
“Ah! A long way for a man in your condition. About what time did it happen?”
“A little after one o’clock.”
“Humph! Quite a long time ago. And what were you doing on Nogga Creek at that hour?”
“I’ll tell you… I will be happy to explain when Lee returns.”
“All right! All right! Don’t worry. Hi, Lee! Stoke up that confounded fire.”
“Flames are shooting out the top of the chimney, doctor. The water is nearly on the boil.”
“That’s right, Lee. Never mind about the chimney. I always clean it every three months by setting fire to it. And then Mrs. Mumps has a fit and I have to dose her… with brandy.”
Dr. Mulray demonstrated that he was an excellent nurse as well as a good doctor. Lee submissively obeyed his orders, and presently Bony lay with his neck tingling from the application of hot cloths.
“Any pains in the chest or the back, Joe?”
“No, doctor.”
“Ah! Humph! Yes! Lungs not damaged, apparently. You can thank your coat-collar for a lot. Now Lee will want from you particulars about this terrible attack, so you need say nothing more than necessary at this time.”
Bony managed to smile. His neck and throat were feeling much easier, and his nerves were already steadying.
To the worried Lee, he said, “Explain to Doctor Mulray who I am. Doctor Mulray will respect the confidence, I know.”
As the constable told who Bony was and the business which had brought him to the district the doctor barked:
“Inspector! Incognito! Bless my soul! Humph! Ah! Yes! Simone knew nothing? Haha! That mountainous fool! That gutter-bred Charlie Chaplin detective! That champion chess-player!”
“In explanation of my absence from the homestead last night, doctor,” Bony took up the tale, “I said that you and I would probably be playing chess the night through to finish a close and interesting game. Let that stand.” To Lee, he said, “Can you manufacture an excuse to visit Wirragatta this morning?”
“Yes. Or rather, there need be no excuse. There is a small matter of a choked bore-drain I wish to see Mr. Borradale about.”
“Very well. Mention to him that I have played chess all night and that I have accepted the doctor’s kind invitation to stay the day. He will probably want to know what a detective means by playing chess all night and then sleeping all day, but no matter. It is important that you find some pretext to interview Donald Dreyton and Hang-dog Jack and note if they behave abnormally-if they show any signs of having been struggling, even of gunshot wounds. If you can overlook all the other men, do so. Then ride across to theStorries ’ and have a look at Fred and his son Tom.
“I was attacked on the north bank of the creek under the trees approximately opposite that tall leopardwood-tree growing out on the plain. I made a distinct cross on the clay-pan on which I regained consciousness. I want you to search for my pistol and torch. I was too ill to do so myself. Make a thorough examination of the locality for clues and tracks. Tracks there will be none, I feel sure. You may find a shred of grey flannel cloth. Is that clear? Oh, and you will say nothing to anyone of my adventure.”
“Perfectly, sir-er-Bony.”
“No more,” interrupted the doctor, flourishing a hypodermic syringe. “That’ll do for the present, Lee. Take a stiffener before you leave and tell your good wife to keep her mouth shut. I’ll be having that Mrs. Mumps here in an hour, and I’ll have to explain about the fire being lit so early. And now, Inspector Bonaparte, you are going to indulge in a nice long nap. Where will you have it? In the arm is as good as anywhere. That’s the idea. I like a man with guts, because I have none myself. I wouldn’t have loitered about Nogga Creek at that hour for the price of Wirragatta itself. Bless my soul! And Simone’s arrested the wrong man! Haha! Now close your eyes and sleep.”
When Bony awoke, the sun was striking full on the lowered blind. The wind no longer heaved and strained at the roof iron and drummed on the walls. The house stillness permitted the sounds of Carie’s life to penetrate into the room-the not unpleasant sounds of goat and cow bells and a blacksmith’s hammer on ringing iron.
He was feeling much better in himself, and his throat felt much less painful. Save for the stiffness of neck muscles, he had almost recovered from his ordeal, and he earnestly blessed Dr. Mulray-and his coat-collar. He was smoking his second cigarette when the old man came into the room. “Ah! Humph! Smoking, eh!” he exclaimed in noticeably subdued voice. “Mrs. Mumps thinks that we had a night of it together and she is now preparing dinner for us, with plenty of Worcestershire sauce in the soup. Great stuff, that sauce. Her husband always drinks a full bottle after one of his benders in order to settle his stomach-what’s left of his stomach, I mean.”
“I am almost completely recovered, doctor, thanks to you,” Bony said as he swung his legs to the floor and so came to sit on the edge of the bed.
“Good! Excellent! Lee is in the study. If you can manage it, I suggest that you dress and come along. We must not arouse the suspicions of my housekeeper. I’ll examine the neck first, though.”
“Show me the bath-room, or may I use the washstand here?”
“Whichever you please. The shower is on the back veranda. I’ll run out and see if Mrs. Mumps will favour us with a pot of tea.” The ponderous old man rolled away to the door, but before opening it turned and smiled and said, “We can add brandy to the tea if we choose.”
Fifteen minutes later the detective was sipping tea and smoking a cigarette in the study. In his workaday station-hand’s clothes, he did not appear as disreputable as he might have done had Dr. Mulray’s clothes looked better than they were. Lee was in uniform, and the wearing of uniform had a distinctly official effect on both his appearance and his mind.
“I gave your excuse to Mr. Borradale,” he began his report. “He didn’t believe it, but it hardly mattered. He was more relieved with the wind having gone round to thesouth’ard early this morning, when it lost its power to raise the dust. Dreyton looked all right. Smart as always. As for Hang-dog Jack-well, his eyes were red from lack of sleep and his temper was bad. The others were normal. Fred Storrie is in bed with a mild attack of influenza, which he says he got down at Broken Hill. Tom looked and behaved all right. He’s doing the cooking and looking after his father while the women are down in Adelaide.
“I found your gun and torch at the edge of the claypan you scored with a cross. The torch is all right, but the gun is empty and clogged with grit.”
“So Fred Storrie is in bed with influenza, is he? Did you see him?”
“Yes. He’s got it sure enough. I hope I don’t catch it…”
“Could Storrie successfully trick a layman into believing he had influenza, doctor?”
“He might. He wouldn’t trickme, though,” asserted Mulray. “But surely-”
Bony stood up and sauntered to the window, before which he lingered. The doctor glanced at the policeman, and Lee placed a finger to his mouth, indicating the advisability of silence. Opposite the doctor’s house was the hall and drawn up outside the side entrance was a car and a man pouring water into the radiator. The scene recalled to Bony’s mind the car driver who filled his radiator only after the static electricity had been allowed to drain from his car. When he turned back to the doctor and Lee, his eyes were smiling.
“I am going to take you both into my confidence, not because I love you so much, but because I need your assistance. It is not really the detective’s business to take anybody into his confidence, but then, you see, I am not a real policeman,” Bony told them.
“When I first came here, Constable Lee prepared for me a list of the names of everyone living in and around Carie over the last two full years. I have struck out all but eleven names. Among the remaining eleven is the Strangler. I haven’t proof of it, but I yet believe it. Your name, doctor, is one of the names struck off. I am about to strike off your name, Lee. That will leave ten names.”
Rapidly Bony related all that he had seen and experienced during the night of terror, and the discerning Dr. Mulray came to understand the real measure of Bony’s courage. Lee listened intently, and twice essayed to take his long and narrow note-book from his pocket.
“I never saw my assailant,” Bony concluded. “That he is exceptionally strong in the hands and arms, I was given ample proof. Understand, a man who is strong in his hands and arms need not be strong in his legs and body, and he need not be a big man. What caused him to fling me aside before he had killed me we shall probably never know, unless it is that I winged him with my pistol, or that its reports frightenedhim. You say, Lee, that all the cartridges were expended?”
“Yes; the gun was empty. It seems evident that we’ll have to put that cook through the hoops. Hang-dog Jack’s the man right enough. Why, he’s strong enough to hold me. Is he on your list of suspects?”
“He is,” Bony admitted. “And yet we will not question him or permit him to think we suspect him. I had you among the eleven suspects, Lee, because youcould have killed those two and attacked Mabel. I have taken you off the list because you wear a nine-size boot. Who the other eight on the list are I will not inform you just yet.”
Lee grinned ruefully.
“You’re a strange fellow, Bony,” he said.
“Ah! How many times have I heard that? I wonder now if Dreyton is responsible for the introduction of it into this district. Well, there are quite a number of strange fellows here. Tell me, doctor, can you guess what Dreyton was before he left England? It is sometimes easy to tell a man’s profession from his gait, his eyes, even the cast of his face.”
“Dreyton!” echoed the doctor, and he drew in his breath and distended his pendulous cheeks. “Yes, I can guess with reasonable certainty of being correct. I’d wager a bet that he was once in the Royal Navy. I’d wager ten bets that he was an officer. There is not a great deal of difference between the face-cast of the military and the naval officer, but there is certainly a small distinction.”
“He would be, then, of that class commonly called the ‘upperclass’ in England?”
“Yes. Dreyton would belong to the ‘County’ class. Probably, nay, almost certainly, he comes from a long line of naval officers.’ ”
“Thank you. Now would it be too much to ask you to visit Fred Storrie in order to be sure that he does suffer an attack of influenza?”
“Not at all, inspector. I could go along right away.”
“Good! Try to remember, doctor, that to all my friends I am Bony, and I would like to count you among the number. While you are away Lee and I will get to work on the details of a little plan I have conceived. With your permission we will use your writing materials. And then, at dinner-if you will invite me to dinner-we will discuss the moon and madness and static electricity.”