Juggernaut Part 3

As if moved by a common impulse, both turned and took a brief survey of the neighbouring tables. On Esther they bent but a casual glance. She was apparently quite absorbed in the contents of her bag.

"She saw him in bed, ill, very ill. There was a nurse beside him."

"Oh, ill enough for a nurse ... Well, did she see anything more?"

"No, that was all, except that she described the doctor."

"Not my friend Sartorius?"

"Yes, she described him perfectly."

Esther strained her ears to catch all they said. Dr. Sartorius--so these people were patients of his!

"What then?"

"Nothing. She woke up."

"She would!"

He gave an ironical laugh.

"Still, Arthur, one can't help thinking ... after all, he's seventy-three...."

"Yes, and he'll live to be ninety. You'll see."

"Ninety!"

"I'm not joking. It wouldn't surprise me if he outlived us both."

There was a gasp of horror from the Frenchwoman.

"Oh, Arthur, it's cruel of you! Besides, I tell you, it's impossible; it's----"

"Yes, I know, it's simply not done. But he'll do it, you'll see."

"I will not see. I refuse to believe it. He cannot, he----"

"Steady on, Therese!"

There was a note of warning in his voice the cause of which Esther perceived when a moment later the couple were joined by a plump Frenchwoman with hennaed hair and a burnt-orange make-up.

"_Comment ca va, Therese?_ Ah, Captain, _on me dit que vous avez l'intention de nous quitter. C'est vrai?_"

What ensued was lost in a cackle of French interspersed with high-pitched laughter. The friend sat down for a few minutes, joked with the "Captain," drank the remainder of his c.o.c.ktail, and patted him familiarly on the cheek. Esther stole a glance at the beautiful blonde woman and found her calm, gazing across the room with narrowed eyes and an expression of thought. At last she got out her mirror and made herself up, as delicately as a cat washes its face, little touches here and there.

"Going?"

"Yes, I shall see if the doctor will give me a _piqure_. I am very tired."

"I thought you had them on Mondays and Thursdays."

"Yes, but sometimes I have an extra one. They pick me up."

"_Ah, les piqures! Je suis, tres bien, ca!_"

In two minutes all three had risen and disappeared into the crowd about the broad stairs that led into the room. Left behind, Esther felt a sense of flatness and anti-climax. She had begun to take such a keen interest in the blonde woman and her young Englishman, that the thought of not finding out more about them filled her with disappointment.

Still, they were patients of the doctor she was perhaps going to work for; there was a chance that she might learn something more. She sat turning over in her mind all she had overheard. Though not particularly worldly wise, she was no fool, and while she was not quite clear about the situation of these two and their relations to each other, the various implications they had let fall were not entirely lost on her.

She had not seen the last of the Captain, as it happened. Five minutes later she caught sight of him sauntering about near the entrance with a vacant eye and a restless manner. Simultaneously there approached her corner a short, enormously fat, overdressed woman, barging aggressively ahead towards the vacant table, her huge bosom well in advance like the prow of a s.h.i.+p. As the swarthy face drew nearer she saw that it and the bosom belonged to the Spanish woman of the Carlton--no doubt the very one who was trying to entice the young man to the Argentine. Yes, and there was the daughter coming in her wake, a clumsily built girl in pink satin, her swart arms bare to the shoulder. The elder woman attacked the waiter almost bodily, and in hard, guttural French commanded him to move the table closer to the dancing floor--an operation causing considerable annoyance to the surrounding guests.

For a moment the Spaniard pressed her hulk so close to Esther that the latter was nearly choked with the fumes of her chypre. Then suddenly there was a shriek of delight. The lady, as Esther expressed it to herself, had discovered her "boy friend."

"What will be the end of it?" wondered Esther as she paid her bill and rose to go. "Which of these two women is going to get her way?"

With amus.e.m.e.nt she watched the stolid daughter led away by a "professional" to dance the tango, leaving her mother in eager conversation with the Englishman, tapping his arm with her pudgy hand, her black eyes like burnt holes in the whiteness of her powdered face.

Then she threaded her way out of the restaurant and through the main entrance of the Casino.

When she reached her hotel the sallow clerk called to her as she pa.s.sed his desk.

"Oh, Mees, I have here a note for you. It has just arrived."

She tore open the envelope. It contained two lines in a small, slovenly hand, on thick, engraved paper.

"Dr. Sartorius will expect Nurse Rowe to-morrow, Wednesday, at nine in the morning."

So that was that!

CHAPTER III

Esther was not mistaken in her surmise that the doctor was by choice at least more of a scientist than a physician. Patients he had to be sure, a respectable number, composed mostly of English and American tourists, well-to-do people. Esther thought that if he had been more keenly interested or a better business man he might have developed his practice into a large and lucrative one. She recognised in him the sure instinct of the natural diagnostician, she knew enough to realise that his methods and knowledge were up to date. Even that manner of his, though a little forbidding, had the merit of inspiring confidence.

One felt he was a big man and could afford to dispense with geniality.

Yet it was perfectly apparent that his practice never came first with him. Esther had not been in the house with him half a week before she made that discovery. Every free minute of the day found him engrossed in his experiments, to the utter exclusion of all else, so intolerant of interruption that he more than once kept patients waiting a quarter of an hour in the gloomy salon while he finished some piece of work.

The laboratory, with which Esther quickly became familiar, was at the top of the house, up two flights of stairs, a bare, L-shaped room built originally for a studio. A sloping skylight admitted a strong north light, which streamed down on the long table covered with all the paraphernalia of research. There were two gla.s.s cabinets containing bottles of many descriptions, and a plain Normandy oak armoire, fitted with shelves upon which were specimens and materials for work. A fibre mat and a couple of kitchen chairs completed the furnis.h.i.+ngs of the main part, but in a sort of alcove which formed the base of the L, and which was curtained off by thick red hangings, was a camp bed with a table beside it and a chest of drawers. Here, so she was told by Jacques the servant, the doctor not infrequently slept when he had carried on his labours far into the night. He would drop down on the hard bed at perhaps five in the morning, just as he was, in his s.h.i.+rt and trousers, with only an old army blanket over him, and there he would sleep like a dead man till Jacques brought him his tea.

Esther learned a good deal from Jacques who, despite his desperado exterior, proved to be friendly and communicative, glad no doubt of someone to chat with since his master was so particularly reserved.

His master, Jacques confided about the third day, was not a man at all but a machine. Work, work, work--day and night, no thought for comfort, no distractions, no voices. _Voyons!_ It was against nature when a man lived like that. And what did he get for it?

"_ecoutez, mademoiselle_," the little man of the Midi said to her earnestly, laying his finger on her arm, "if the doctor worked only one half so hard--only one half, now I am telling you--he could be a rich man to-day, with a palace, three, four cars, a chauffeur, a _valet de chambre_. It is only because he spends his time up there in that room that he makes so little money."

Esther knew that he was right, although she understood better than he the unworldly aims of the man.

Jacques had more to tell her. Such was the doctor's complete stupidity, not to be comprehended by rational beings, that whenever he had a little money put aside he would shut up shop and take a holiday, so as to be able to devote all his days to research.

"Mademoiselle knows that is not a way to do," complained Jacques in an aggrieved voice. "People think he not practise any more, they find another doctor. Many, many times he lose patients that way. _Quelle betise, voyons!_"

"He must have been practising pretty steadily now for some time,"