The lecture was over, the audience was pouring out of the theatre, and Adams was talking to Thénard, whom he knew personally.
“Well, no,” said Adams. “None very fixed just at present. Of course I shall practise in my own country, but I can’t quite see the opening yet.”
CHAPTER II
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
