CHAPTER VII
FLYING STEEL
THEY came to a long flight of wide pink steps, narrowing at the top, and to the palacio's ancient doorway surmounted by a pure Spanish fanlight. While Dan made sure of the medicines that had been brought, two native servants, who looked like cattlemen, stepped from out of the shadows, their machetes thrust in belts made by twisting around their waists lariats that would easily support the weight of a man. The peons leaped toward the tired mules and, at a gesture from Don Ramon, who did not otherwise greet them, led the animals away in hroken-nosed Luis' company. A mere word from her uncle, and the girl, with no phrase or glance of farewell, hurried through the open door and disappeared down a vaulted hallway. To Stone, Villeta repeated the Castilian form of welcome.
“First of all,” said Dan, condemning himself for not having thought more of the sick man, and now thoroughly intent on the saving of life, “I'd like to see my patient.”
“My dear fellow!” Villeta put his brown, jeweled hand gently on the young man's shoulder. “You must have refreshment. You must bathe and rest! There is no such haste after a two day's journey.
“But I told you that he might be dead by now!”
Don Ramon's wide face shook in smiling dissent. “You were too occupied to hear? But no. It is your wholly excusable ignorance of Spanish. My servants say he is not dead—not even a little. And now”—he smiled deprecatingly as if at Stone's zeal—“this so-lucky patient must be made ready.”
In the twilight of the corridor, Dan had been trying to ascertain whether his medicines were intact.
“Not at all!” he exclaimed. His professional manner, though young, would brook little interference; here he must be his own master. “The patient,” said he decisively, “needn't be made ready for his doctor, nor, in the circumstances, need his doctor be made ready for the patient. I've come a long way, and the man was very sick when I started. I wish to see him at once, if you please.”
Ramon murmured protestingly. “Muy señor, mio”
From far down the hall a raucous scream interrupted him in the Domingan cry for help: “Socorro! Socorro! Socorro!”
Something rushed through the dark air. A wing brushed Dan's startled face, and then, by the light from the still opened door, he saw a green-and-yellow parrot settle on one of his host's broad shoulders and begin to peck in a sort of insolent affection at Villeta's swarthy cheek.
“Do not be alarmed,” Don Ramon smiled. He put up a plump hand and stroked the bird with a kindness unmistakably genuine. “This is only my best friend, Pedro. Pedro, this is the good American doctor who is come to cure Señor Tucker.” And in Spanish he bade the bird speak to his guest and apologize for having startled him.
Pedro cocked his head and glared at Dan with an evil eye.
“Lo siento!” he squawked, but, if he indeed knew what he was saying, his tone and expression belied the apology inherent in the words.
Meanwhile, Villeta appeared to have been using this diversion as a cover to reconsider Dan's indubitably fixed demand. The young doctor could not understand the hesitation.
“So you must see your patient at once?” Villeta repeated.
“At once,” said Dan firmly.
Don Ramon shrugged. “You American doctors!” he chaffed. “So impetuous! But I think the results of your impetuosity justify themselves. I have the utmost confidence in American doctors.”
He had submitted. Dismissing Pedro, he led the way up broad stairs and then through long and echoing corridors.
This portion of the building—obviously the old portion—seemed untenanted, and yet Dan had the sense of unseen presences. Once he thought he heard the patter of bare feet ahead, yet nobody was overtaken—nobody visible. Again his ear was caught by what sounded like a woman's sob, but neither Ramon's niece nor any other woman came into view. So Villeta and his physician made a half dozen turns, past rooms apparently deserted, and came to a narrow stone staircase up which they climbed to the very top of the house. As they mounted, Villeta talked genially as always, but in a voice that seemed gradually to rise and was, Dan somehow suspected, meant to carry a warning of their approach.
They now gained another hall and here, at one closed door more, Villeta stopped. He spoke against the panel to some one behind it:
“It is the master,” said he in Spanish. “I bring a strange doctor—not the Sanchez medico, but an American.”
Was there the slightest sound from within? Dan could have sworn to one, yet when, after an instant's unnecessary pause, they entered, he observed no occupant save the sick man.
That one, in a bare apartment, under a high and narrow window, lay on a lofty old four-poster bed, tossing to and fro, his long fingers plucking at the sheet that covered him from feet to chin. His age was perhaps fifty-two or three, and the stiff hair of his head, as well as the stubble on his cheeks, was iron gray. In health he must have been one of those gaunt New Englanders of the Massachusetts coast whose families used to recruit the whaling trade; intolerant men and hard, but honest and brave, who see small help for themselves or anybody else in a future world, yet live in this one a life of rectitude. How fallen he might be from the estate of his forbears, there was now no telling; his face was purple, his eyes feverishly aglare, and his lips so stiffened as to emit only, at rare intervals, a low groan.
“Unconscious?” asked Don Ramon.
Dan lifted an eyelid. “Unconscious.”
“But you can bring him around?” Villeta frowningly gnawed at his fingers. Now that he had admitted the physician, he seemed to be in the utmost haste. “The work is of such an importance and so immediate. If you can bring him around for one week only”
Stone was busy with an examination. “If he gets well for a week, he gets well entirely. I want hot water; there must be a counterirritant. Tumblers—spoons”—he looked about the all-but-empty room—“hot-water bottles, or cloths, if you've nothing better. I suppose there is no ice? And I must know just how this man has been kept alive so far, and why is there no one here to nurse him now?”
“There is—or there just has been!” Don Ramon soothed. “I, too—I cannot understand the absence. The nurse must have stepped out for something.”
“What has he been fed? I must have full details.” There was about all this too much the look of neglect to suit Dan. If the patient was to be cured, there could be no longer any carelessness or inattention. “A nurse must be in constant attendance!”
“I am amazed that he left even for a moment,” said Don Ramon. He looked really perplexed, and Dan softened a little.
“The fact is, Don Ramon,” said he, “that it is miraculous that this man is still alive. If he is to continue to live, I must have all the help I can get.”
“You shall! You shall!” Villeta, one eye on the unconscious man, paced the somber room.
He appeared to consider the advisability of confidences. Then, seeing nothing in Dan's eager young face to dissuade him, he proceeded:
“You thought, perhaps, that I seemed too much to realize the impossibility of great hurry at the start of our journey; now, having made the journey, you should understand that I was but facing facts like a philosopher, which I am. It required nearly two days to go to Sanchez and two to return. It may be I had other errands of equally vital importance. But those are completed. I should say, one of them is satisfactorily completed.” Don Ramon, still pacing the floor, looked the soul of honesty. “But now you are here. I tell you truly, Señor Josiah Tucker is more important to me at present than anything else—anybody else on my estate.” He looked anxiously at Dan, who all this time was attentively occupying himself with the man on the bed. “My dear fellow, do everything in your power to save him!”
“Then have me sent at once the articles I called for! Your—your servants”—he caught himself in time—“have you none that understands English?”
Villeta's eyelids flickered as if in self-questioning.
“No,” he said. “None save my personal servant, and he understands and speaks only incompletely. But you shall have his services whenever possible, and by all—all—your every gesture shall be obeyed.” He turned to the door. “I go now to have those articles brought to you. When you have done all for the time possible, inquire for the comedor—that is to say, the dining room, and do me the honor of joining me there for a poor supper.” He hesitated again. “Tucker is quite unconscious, is he not?”
The ample planter's bulk filled the doorway. He did not frown, but he seemed, in one final comprehensive regard, to take note of the young doctor's straight, youthful figure, his straight blue eyes and, above all, his almost bristlingly straight, tow-colored hair. Villeta's right hand had involuntarily sought his white teeth in momentary hesitation, as the doctor corroborated his first examination; then the hand lowered.
“Yes,” Dan replied, “the patient is quite unconscious.”
Don Ramon gave a great sigh. He left the room.
Only a few minutes later there came a knock at the door. Though Dan hurried to open it, he found no one there, and yet his orders had been wonderfully fulfilled. On the tiles of the passage stood everything of which he had need.
Grumbling, however, at the lack of another's presence, he set to work in the dual capacity of physician and nurse. Desperately he toiled over the man before him; the crisis was apparently passed. The fever must be slowly abating. The patient was nevertheless still a very ill man. How he had lived until now Stone could not divine. The fellow must possess in remarkable degree the resistance of both a good constitution and a strong will. However, it was now clear that, with proper care, he would continue to live, and that was the point of immediate import.
Under his fellow countryman's ministrations, Tucker gradually entered another state. He began to move feebly; the glassiness left his eys, and he passed directly from complete unconsciousness to semidelirium. Incoherent phrases tumbled from his lips, now in Spanish, now in Yankee speech. Dan did not try to catch their meaning, nor, at first, would he have been able to, for they were barely mumbled. Then, all at once, they became distinct:
“Ink—this won't do. It won't do! Ink, ink! I must have”
He half sat up. He laid hold of the physician's muscular arm.
“Yes, yes,” said Dan. A medical student true to type, he had the habit of most doctors and all nurses, who regard every sick man as either a baby or an idiot. “You shall have ink, and a pen, and paper, too—just as soon as you are a little better.”
“Ah, paper!” This had been an unfortunate suggestion. It increased Tucker's excitement. “That's it. That's what I was trying to think of! I can't wait any longer. I must have it now.” The delicate fingers clutched at the air as if reaching for it. “Paper—paper—paper!'
Complete sentences followed, but now utterly unintelligible. Stone explained to himself that his patient probably wanted to write home to wife or child, or else that an expected letter from the States had failed to arrive. Something, at all events, was increasing the sick man's excitement to a dangerous degree; it was becoming intense to the point of complete delirium. He was tossing with such violence that, unaided, Dan must soon become incapable of holding him.
There was a bell rope. Dan pulled it, but heard no answering jangle. He rushed to the door. He uttered a few useless imprecations. Just in time he held back a summons in Spanish. He wished he had never told that lie about his ignorance of the language, but now, in his strongest voice, he called in English for help.
He dreaded to leave his patient, and yet he must have assistance. He ran a few paces down the hall; it was empty. Then, not daring to remain longer absent, he turned back.
The door had somehow closed behind him. As he reached for the knob, he was startled into momentary inactivity by a new sound from within; it was the sound of a voice totally different from the New Englander's.
It was thin and high pitched; it was unmistakably Domingan. With foul spurts of native dirtiness, it was shrieking in the island patois:
“You rabbit fool that are food for the snake! You talk too much. I told you to hold your tongue before the doctor! I told you! By the Diamond of the Toad but now you shall pay!”
It was the strangest sort of phraseology. Dan's ears caught the general import of the words, but he could hardly credit his hearing. He flung wide the door—and then he could hardly credit his eyes.
Like nothing human, like a black jungle cat, like a devil, a hideous form was kicking in the bed. It knelt right upon the patient's chest, and its long yellow claws were digging deeper and deeper into the sick man's throat.
Dan leaped upon the creature and wrenched it off. With loathing hands and rising hair he tossed it, struggling and spitting, into the farthest corner—a dwarf hunchback with a twisted face.
Panting from the exertion, the doctor turned to the patient, whose breath was stertorous. Then something warned him not to lose sight of the object in the corner, and he wheeled again.
It was not a moment too soon. Across the room flew a vicious knife. He dodged just in time. The long blade buried itself a full two inches in the soft wood of the wainscoting not half a foot from his heart.