# How I Met a Very Ignorant Practitioner

Short story originally published in Cassell's Magazine, March 1905
By Clifford Ashdown,
Author of "The Adventures of Romney Pringle."
How I Met a Very Ignorant Practitioner.
A Complete Story.
"So you're Dr. Wilkinson," said Dr. Inns. "Rather young, ain't you? I've never had a local what-d'you-call-it before, but anyone from Adamson's sure to be all right. Been expecting you all day. Come in."
Adamson, the agent, good fellow that he was, never left me long unemployed, so here I was at Hestford—Hestford on the Wash, about the last place that was created, I should say. As I cycled the couple of miles from the station, leaving my traps to follow, I wondered what on earth could have induced any man to settle in such an out-of-the-way corner. The country was flat and sparsely-wooded, and the Virginia creeper, which covered the little house with just a trace of autumn bronzing, was about the only dash of colour in a singularly grey and cheerless landscape.
Dr. Inns, as he called himself, and as I shall therefore call him, was squat and thickset, with a mop of red hair and a stiff beard that looked as if he had forgotten to shave for a week, so short and stubbly was it. He was active enough for all his stoutness, and as I followed him through the cottage—it was nothing more—I noticed he was full of funny little jerks and starts, peering about him in bird-fashion, as if he feared an assailant at every turn. He opened the door of a room which I took to be the parlour, and curling up in the only easy chair, left me to find a seat for myself.
"We'd better get to business,” said he, "as I leave early to-morrow. Now this here's the room where I see everybody who comes—the consulting room, you'd call it—eh?"
I murmured something in reply, and cast a wondering look round. I have never seen a consulting room that so successfully concealed its character as this, for the only thing at all professional about the place was a battered old wooden stethoscope up on the mantel. Inns was evidently a practitioner of the old school, who scorned new-fangled aids to diagnosis. I am afraid I was taking too much stock of the room to pay heed to what he said; he must have been talking some time, but I fortunately began to listen just at the right moment.
"And now to tell you about this here case," he was saying. "He's had this inflammation of the lungs on him for the last six months."
"Six months!" I exclaimed in astonishment at such a record.
"Ah! all that and more," with a sage shake of the head.
"Is the temperature still high?"
"It's never been high."
My jaw fell.
"What! With pneumonia?" I protested.
"He's not had nemonia." This very ​doggedly. "I said inflammation of the lungs."
This was a facer, and as it was the first time I had ever heard that the popular and scientific terms were not indicative of the same disease, I could find nothing to say, and patiently awaited a further access of information.
"Well, that's all about Ikin."
"What is the patient?" I ventured to ask.
"Oh, he's a miller—worth every penny of forty thousand pounds. He's been getting rather fidgetty lately; talked of having a consultation. But there's no other doctor anywhere nearer than Treacham, and I ain't on speaking terms with the man there. The only other one who's bad is Warkwell, the old wharfinger. He's got St. Anthony's fire."
"Heavens!" I thought. "If that is how he speaks of erysipelas I shall expect to hear of 'jail fever' and the 'sweating sickness' next!"
"Do you make up your own medicines?" I asked when I had recovered sufficiently.
"Rather! There's no chemist nearer than Treacham. I've got an A1 little surgery, I can tell you. Just come and have a look at it."
He got up and opened a door opposite the one we had entered by; within was a long, cupboard-like place, rather dark in spite of its whitewashed walls. But after all I had seen hitherto I was quite unprepared for what was in store for me. I expected to find just a mere handful of drugs, but, as a matter of fact, the array of bottles and jars, tier after tier, bright with gilt-lettering, from floor to ceiling, would have been no discredit to a London chemist's shop. As I turned round to thoroughly inspect the place I caught Dr. Inns's eye.
"Ah, I thought it'd fetch you! All done from London; gave 'em a blank manifest when I first came down here."
One thing that struck me was the enormous stock of everything he seemed to keep; not a bottle that was not full to the stopper. But when, attracted by some very fine crystals, I took one down for closer inspection, I found that it was not only thickly coated with dust, but the stopper was so firmly fixed that I doubt if it had ever been opened since it was put there! Inns had been watching me, and I noticed that he looked as awkward as I felt, so I put the bottle on the shelf again, and was casting about for some topic to break the silence when my eye fell on what I concluded was his day-book.
"Oh, is this the day-book?" I asked.
"Yes, that's it," and he opened the parchment bound volume, and ran a coarse and rather dirty finger down the pages.
Now I have seen some curious day-books, both before and since then, but I think this was about the most curious of all. Here were none of the cabalistic signs and jargon which have such a puzzling effect upon the uninitiated; the weights and quantities were written at full length—"ounces," "drachms," "grains," etc.; the drugs, too, were set down in their conventional English names, while the directions appeared in the homeliest vernacular. In a word, the entries had very much the appearance of those in some housewife’s book of recipes, and so far from no one but himself being able to understand Dr. Inns's day-book (not at all an unusual occurrence in the case of a busy practitioner), I think it would have appeared quite simple to even non-professional readers.
"Know this here?" he asked, reaching up to a shelf above the desk, and taking down a fat volume, which he held out to me. I looked at it; it was a Popular Physician. "First-rate book," he commented as he turned over the leaves, which I could see were thumbed and dog’s-eared with long service.
"First-rate, as you say," I agreed. At the same time I wondered what occult reason could induce any medical man to constitute half his library of reference from an elementary work intended solely for the unprofessional public. I say "half his library," for this and one other book were all that I could see in the place, the second volume being "The Shipmaster's Medical Guide," a work which the Board of Trade regulations require every ship not provided with a surgeon of its own to carry as a guide to the medicine chest. Looking at it, I was reminded of the story of the captain who, finding that a sailor's symptoms required the aid of a mixture of which he was short—say No. 9—made up the required medicine by half a dose of No. 5, and a similar quantity of No. 4, to the entire satisfaction of all concerned.
Altogether Dr. Inns was a curious study, and when we had presently discussed a meal, which being neither a late dinner nor an early supper was a mixture of both, I spent ​a very amusing evening listening to his yarns of sea-life, for it presently came out that he had spent several years in the "South American Steam Navigation Co.'s" service.
For some reason which he did not disclose, he appeared to have grown restless and dissatisfied with his present lot. As the evening wore he grew so far communicative as to tell me that his absence would not be all holiday-making.
"I'm going up to London to see if Adamson can't sell this practice," said he.
"Going to sea again?" I suggested.
"Well, no; not exactly. Don't know what I shall do when I clear out. Do nothing for a little while, p'raps. Not that I'm overworked here. You'll have nothing to do but these two visits, so far as I know."
"You're wanting me for a fortnight, aren't you?" I replied.
"Well, yes, I think so. I may take a run over to Paris for a day or two while Adamson is finding someone to buy the practice. If you want to know anything just write to me, 'care of Adamson,' but I don't expect I shall be far away."
As he remarked, he certainly did not seem to be overworked. From the time I arrived in the late afternoon until we went to bed about eleven, no patients put in an appearance. Like the rest of the house, my bedroom was furnished with a Spartan simplicity which I put down to Inns's pronounced nautical tastes. But I liked it all the better for that, and turning in, I slept soundly until wakened in the morning by Inns himself. He told me not to hurry down to breakfast, as he had to catch an early train. The little pony-cart in which he did his rounds was already waiting, and he drove away after bidding me farewell in the unconventional style which marked all his actions. The same elderly woman who had waited on us in the evening gave me breakfast, and with the groom, or page (his were composite duties, as I found), seemed to make up the entire establishment.
I dawdled over breakfast, for there seemed little else to fill up the time with, and a newspaper was unheard of in such a place. The trap returned by the time I had finished, but I sent out word that I preferred to cycle rather than drive, and after a smoke I sallied out to pay my two visits. I found the miller in his house on one side of the square formed by the mill and a long stretch of granaries. He lay on a sofa by an open window, from which he was able to superintend the unloading of some grain. He looked hale and hearty enough, and greeted me with a cordiality which scarcely surprised me when I remembered his wish to have a "second opinion."
"And how do you find yourself to-day, Mr. Ikin?" I asked, after listening patiently to the long history of his troubles.
"Oh, I'm in the same miserable condition," he said with an air of profound self-pity.
"No better?"
"Not a bit!"
"But you've got no cough now," I urged.
"Never had one."
I gasped. And he had had inflammation of the lungs, too.
"Dr. Inns tells me you had no particular fever."
"No; he used to take my temperature at first, but the thermometer never showed anything, however long I sat on it. There it is; would you like to try it?" He pointed to an ordinary household thermometer (the shilling kind, made in Germany) that hung on the wall! It was lucky he did so, for in another second I should have given Inns away by producing my own neat little "thirty second" clinical thermometer from my waistcoat.
Honestly, I would have given a sovereign at that moment to be able to laugh. At the risk of apoplexy, I managed to control the emotion, but I am sure I must have turned purple with the effort. If only the miller would have made a joke, even the feeblest, so that I could have had an excuse to explode comfortably! But he was dismally serious, so to save the situation I insisted on thoroughly overhauling him, finding nothing amiss but dyspepsia and a general flabbiness, the result of want of exercise. By the time I had finished, the more acute spasms of my hilarity were vanquished, and assuring him that his lungs were quite sound, I ventured no opinion as to what their former condition might have been. As he was taking no medicine, having refused further dosing in disgust, there was no treatment for me to alter; but I did the best I could by strictly enjoining his wife to attend to his diet, and to send him out for a daily walk. On the whole, I got over the interview better than I could have expected, but never prisoner enjoyed his freedom more heartily than did I as I rode from the house, wobbling dangerously with pent-up mirth. Indeed, as soon as I had ​ "I turned to thoroughly inspect the place." (p. 443). safely turned a corner of the road, I was forced to tumble off the machine, and sitting on a bank, laughed till the tears cascaded from my cheeks.
After such an experience I had a curious anxiety about the next patient. I looked him up in my visiting list. "Warkwell, wharf labourer, erysipelas." Inns, truly, called it "St. Anthony's fire," but this had been too unscientific for me, although it was clear that diagnosis was not his strong point. I doubted if he could have gone far wrong in such a case.
I had been directed none too clearly to the place, and must have gone altogether astray, for after inquiring the road several times I seemed to be moving in a circle and only arrived at the house at dinner-time, to judge by the smell that reminded me how long ago I had breakfasted. The whole family, including the patient, were enjoying a leg of salt pork—hardly the most suitable diet for erysipelas. My first impulse was to retire, with an apology for interrupting the meal, but this was so warmly opposed that I stayed on. I was not very much surprised to find no evidence of erysipelas either present or recent; it was only what I expected, but I did wonder how Inns had failed to see that the man was really suffering from scurvy. I recognised it as such at the first glance; indeed, I never met with a more typical case.
"It's main catchin' this," observed Warkwell. "We've all had it, but somehow it's sarved me worsern' any."
"Perhaps you eat a good deal of pork?" I ventured.
"Yes; I gets it cheap from the shippin' stores."
"I think you'd be better without it."
"Why, Dr. Inns takes it an' thrives on it. I've heard 'um say theer's nothin' like it."
I felt conscientiously indignant at this, and straightway attacked his pork dietary, telling him he would never get well until he took fresh meat, with plenty of vegetables, and especially lemons, or at least homemade lemonade. But I could see that neither Warkwell nor his wife believed me, and fearing they might construe my advice into an attack upon Inns, I rode away home in a much less cheerful frame of mind than when I arrived. It was impossible, I thought, to regard Inns as anything else than an incompetent ass, yet he was well qualified, and had a fair record in the "Medical Directory." It was a good thing his practice was small, or Heaven help Hestford! And then I began to wonder if his incompetence was getting known, and whether that might not be the reason for his wanting to clear out, while he still had any practice left to dispose of. Anyhow, I determined to let him know on the first opportunity what I thought of Warkwell's case, for I felt I should otherwise be an accessory to the practical murder of the poor creature.
Towards the end of the fortnight, I seized ​what looked like a last opportunity of cycling across country to the cathedral town, and was pumping up my tyres after dinner when I was told that "the doctor's mother and sister" had called to see him, and would like to speak with me. Wondering what they could possibly want, I obeyed the summons, and found them sitting in the parlour consulting-room. The mother was an aristocratic-looking old dame, with that kind of silvery hair which always looks as if it had been powdered in the fashion of long ago, its striking effect being heightened by a pair of very piercing black eyes. The daughter, barring the white hair, was a replica of her mother, and, I should say, if anything, more handsome and elegant than she had ever been; altogether greater contrasts to the son and brother it would be difficult to imagine. The old lady received my explanations with a stately grace through which I thought I could detect more than a shadow of annoyance.
"Did my son leave no message for me when he went away?" she inquired.
"None whatever that I am aware of; but perhaps the housekeeper——"
"My son would leave no message with a servant!" she interrupted, and went on, "It is really very strange. I wrote and said we should be here to-day."
"Have you come far?"
"From London," rather shortly; and then resumed her catechism. "Has Dr. Inns been gone long?"
"Nearly a fortnight. I expect him back in a day or two."
"Did he say where he was going?"
"To London, I think."
"Did he leave you no address then?"
"Only that of the agent through whom he engaged me."
Her ladyship looked supercilious.
"I am very much obliged to you," she said rising. "I will come again as soon as Dr. Inns returns."
I should have liked much to lengthen the interview. The daughter had never said a word the whole time, and I was anxious to hear her voice. Meanwhile, she had been looking round the room, and whenever her eyes met mine they regarded me as unconcernedly as if I were part of the furniture—a mere chattel of the place. Such eyes as they were too! Deep and liquid, with none of her mother’s keenness about them. (I was young and susceptible in those days.) But as I could think of nothing to detain them longer, I could only rise with the best grace I could muster, and as I showed them to the door the silent maiden so far condescended as to return my bow with a half smile. After all, it is not in woman to resent homage, even if it is unspoken; and I must have disclosed the admiration I felt for her as plainly as if I had fallen on my knees to humbly avow it.
The next morning brought a letter from Inns. He was anxious to know how the patients were going on—at least he said so, but seeing how little he appeared to trouble about them when at home I was sceptical as to his interest in them when away. The letter was very brief—only half a dozen lines or so; and he addressed it from Adamson's office. The housekeeper was clearing the breakfast table as I read it, and apologetically asked me for any news of Inns.
"Well, really, Mrs. Walsham, the doctor says nothing about himself, and only asks me about the patients."
"Ah, he'll be sorry to hear his dear mother and sister have been again. It seems so misfortunate 'tis always so."
"Why, have they missed each other before?" (I never encourage servants to talk, but for once my curiosity got the better of my judgment.)
"Time and again, sir, have they been; but the doctor he's always away from home at the time."
"Do you mean to say they never meet?"
"Not to my knowledge, sir. I've been with the doctor all the time he's lived in Hestford—and that's two year come next Michaelmas—and never yet have they found him. I thought maybe he'd gone up to Lon'on to see them."
A curious state of things, truly, I thought. The situation was even farcical, if farce could possibly be associated with such a haughty pair as the lady and her daughter. I hesitated whether I should say anything about them in my reply. I had an opinion, and a very decided one, as to the two patients, but that I shrank from giving Inns at present, and certainly not in writing; while if I avoided the subject, really I should have nothing to say to him. In the end I alluded to the patients with a vague optimism, and filled up the letter with an account of his visitors, adding that they hoped to see him on his return.
Inns must have been in close attendance at Adamson's, for he sent a reply practically by return of post. He was very ​busy, negotiations for sale in active progress, only a small sum dividing him from a possible purchaser, quite impossible to return, and so on; the gist of it all was, could I wait another week? As I had nothing else in view, and one berth was as good as another, I wrote and consented to stay on.
I had just sent the boy off to the post when Mrs. Walsham told me a gentleman, she thought a new patient, was asking for the doctor, and she presently introduced a tall man, with features of a rather foreign cast, but refined and intellectual withal. He seemed much tanned by exposure, and the lower part of his face was practically hidden by a close black beard. There was an odd reminder about him of someone else—just whom I was unable at the moment to decide.
"Dr. Inns?" he inquired, as he sat down, adding, when I explained matters, "Ah! I thought there must be some mistake, although it's a good many years since I saw him."
"Do you wish to see him professionally?"
"Oh, no, thanks. I knew him in the South American line, and, being in the neighbourhood, I thought I would look him up. Is he as stout as ever?"
"Well, I never met him till a few day ago, but he is certainly rather stout."
"Does he grow his beard now? We were always chaffing him about the way he used to cut himself in shaving, and he used to tell a yarn, I remember, about the number of razors he blunted."
"Yes," I said, "he grows his beard. As to yarns, he has the finest assortment I ever heard."
"Ah, a thorough good fellow. When do you expect him back?"
"In a week for certain, I should say. Who shall I tell him called?"
"Oh, never mind, I want to surprise him. He always enjoyed a practical joke. I can easily run over, as I'm staying at Treacham for the present."
The stranger hardly looked the sort of man one would expect to indulge in practical jokes, and when he had taken his leave I could not help wondering how a man of such obvious refinement could have any serious liking for one of the stamp of Inns, although no doubt the monotony of shipboard has accounted for queerer friendships; for my own part, I could have wished his stay longer, so much was I beginning to feel the dead-and-aliveness of the place.
Ever since our meeting I had been thinking pretty constantly of Inns's sister, and as the third week progressed I told myself each morning that that day I should see her. Shall I confess it? The idea had weighed more than a little with me when I agreed to stay on the extra week. Each day I rose hopefully, and each night I went to bed and lay awake inventing all kinds of reasons for my disappointment. They might be weeks perhaps before they came back; or if they came they might just inquire at the door if Inns had returned and go away again; or (worse still!) Mrs. Inns might come alone. All this I told myself, and in the telling I wished I had a month longer to stay, but the last day came round so quickly that the week seemed as if it had been half its proper length.
Inns was delightfully vague in all his arrangements, and I was quite in the dark as to what time of the day he would return. As it was no good leaving things till the last moment, I spent a depressing afternoon in packing up, and had just finished when a letter arrived in his now familiar scrawl. I opened it listlessly, and then, as I read, my heart gave a bound. He was still busy, quite unable to return. Could I give him another week? And then there was a postscript. Had his mother and sister been again? "A week?" I thought. He could have a month, a year, and I would never ask a fee. How I danced round the room! How I whistled and sang, and kicked the portmanteau under the bed, and dragged it out again, and tumbled my carefully-folded things upon the floor! And then I remembered I must tell Mrs. Walsham the glorious news, and I skipped downstairs and nearly into the arms of a man who was talking to her in the little passage. It was Inns's friend, the dark-bearded man.
"Look here!" he demanded. "I thought you told me Dr. Inns would be home today?"
I should have resented the tone and the manner had I felt only a degree less exhilarated; as it was, I answered with equal stiffness.
"So I believed at the time I saw you."
"Have you got the least idea when he will be back?" He glanced as he spoke at the open letter I held. It was on the tip of my tongue to tell him, but I checked myself. ​Confound him! What right had he to speak to me like that?
"It is very uncertain," I replied, by no means uncandidly. "Will you leave any message this time?"
"No; I have to be in London immediately." And with a curt "Good-day" he disappeared.
In the agreeable task of answering Inns, I quite forgot this unpleasant incident; indeed, it was only as an afterthought I made a casual reference to the man's visits, adding that Inns would no doubt be sorry to have missed his friend.
And now I began to torture myself with all my old doubts of again seeing Miss Innes (I learned the correct name later), and from that time, so fearful was I of being out of the way, that, except when on my few visits, I dared not stir a yard from the house. The next day passed, and the next, and the next after that, before my devotion was rewarded. Yes, she came, and how charming she looked! What I said, what I did, I cannot tell; all I know is that to her I "He fell plump, like a sack of grain, into the corner." spoke, at her I looked, and for a time I heard and saw no one else. I suppose I did not make a palpable fool of myself, for when I began to recover my balance Mrs. Innes was speaking.
"We can only think he must have altered in some way. Something must have happened; some terrible disease or disfigurement; he has been so much abroad. Tell me, Dr. Wilkinson, is it so? No? You have seen nothing of it?—Oh, what a relief! But why this refusal to meet us? We cannot help seeing that he avoids us. He who used to be so devoted to us both, while we remember him only as the gentlest, noblest, most chivalrous of men!"
"Good heavens!" I mentally exclaimed.
"And now," she continued, "I don't know what to think. There are only us three left, and he will not see us." She covered her face with her hands and sobbed. There was not a trace of her former stand-off manner now, and I felt genuinely sorry for her.
"Will you not help us, Dr. Wilkinson?" ​Miss Inns had turned to me, her eyes brimming with tears. It made my blood boil to think that anyone, least of all a boor like Inns, should cause her such distress. Help her, indeed! I had a struggle not to fling myself at her feet and declare myself her devoted slave.
"Only tell me how, and I will do anything in the world!" I protested.
"Help us to meet him—that is all we ask," said she, smiling at my vehemence.
I thought a moment.
"I have agreed to stay here till the end of the week; now if I telegraph on Friday that I must positively leave the next day that will bring him back, and you will be certain to find him on Saturday afternoon. If anything should occur to prevent this I could telegraph to you, Mrs. Innes, if you will give me the address."
"I am afraid I haven’t got a card with me," said the elder lady after a hunt through her bag. "Will you write it down?"
I took out my pocket-book, when "I have one!" exclaimed Miss Innes.
The rest of the day I spent in striking futile matches in the endeavour to keep a pipe going. I suppose it looks foolish when set down in black and white, but it is a fact that I never took my eye from a white card, with "First and third Wednesdays" in one corner, which I had stuck up on the mantelpiece where I could see it. Yes, I was very far gone indeed.
Mindful of my promise, after finishing the rounds on Friday, I cycled on to Treacham to send Inns my ultimatum. Just as I got to the post-office I met the postman; he had a telegram for me, and was not at all sorry to be spared a four-mile tramp. Opening it, I read:—
"Please stop on; detained till next week. Has friend called again?"
"No, no, Dr. Inns," I thought. "I'm ready for you this time." And turning into the office I wired: "Quite impossible; must positively leave Saturday; friend has returned to London.—Wilkinson."
The possession of a certain small square of cardboard, carefully treasured in my pocket-book, enabled me to pack up the next morning in a less dismal frame of mind than I had been in a week before; and when Inns arrived after mid-day, I greeted him with a cheerfulness which he appeared disinclined to reciprocate. He seemed more uncouth than ever, and growled something about breaking off negotiations for the sale through having to come back so soon. In fact, he was in a very bad temper, and I suspected he had been drinking, for when during lunch I referred to the cases of Ikin and Warkwell, and hinted ever so gently at their real states, he lost entire control of himself, flew into a violent passion, and finally accused me of "trying to steal the practice from him!" This was rather more than I could stand, so keeping a tight hand on myself, I rose from the table, and telling him if he would be good enough to write me a cheque for the month's work I would leave at once, I went upstairs to finish packing. As I left the room he roared something after me that sounded like "Not a penny!" I cared little what he said, for I knew his sober reason would tell him that I had the whip-hand of him, and he dare not allow me to sue him for the money.
I had very little more packing to do, and was about to carry the portmanteau down, when I heard a knock, and then a voice which I recognised with a palpitating heart. In my resentment with the drunken brute downstairs I had actually forgotten his mother and sister, and now, as ill-luck would have it, they had arrived at the very worst time they could have chosen. Inns was scarcely fit for the society of men, let alone ladies. I bitterly reproached myself for managing him with so little tact; but regrets being useless, I stole downstairs at once, as I felt sure I should be wanted sooner or later. I could hear Inns growling in deeper and deeper bass, and just as I reached the door I heard the mother's voice.
"What have you done with him? You have murdered him!" she cried.
Something fell, and Miss Innes screamed for help. I rushed in, to find Inns clutching his mother by the throat; and seizing an overturned chair, the first thing handy, I dealt him a crack on the head that would have fractured any ordinary skull. He was not even stunned, however, but fell plump, like a sack of grain, into the corner, where he made no attempt to rise, but lay growling and cursing at large. When I turned round Mrs. Innes and her daughter, both looking very pale, were clasping each other at the farther end of the room.
"Who is this man?" Mrs. Innes demanded; and then as I stared at her, too bewildered to utter a word, "That is not my son!" she insisted.
At this moment there came a knock at the outer door, and a quick step approached ​along the passage. It was Inns's dark friend. For a second he stood surveying the scene, and then, with a cry of "Mother!" stretched out his arms as the two women sprang forward and clung to him with sobs and murmurs of "Reginald! My dear boy! Thank God, you've come back!"
Feebly wondering what was going to happen next, I turned to my late employer. The blow seemed to have sobered him, and except for a slight scalp-wound, he was none the worse. I helped him to get up, for which he thanked me quite humbly, but he trembled, and but for me would have fallen again when the stranger approached.
"And now, Jones," said the latter, "I should like to know what you mean by making use of my name."
"Well, sir, it's rather a long story."
"Thank you, I know the beginning of it. I heard you were sentenced to five years for defrauding your employers."
"Ah, it was a false charge, sir. Indeed it was! I'm innocent as what you are. I managed to escape on my way to Portland, and as everyone thought you'd died after you disappeared from the ship, I thought there was no harm in taking your name, and in order to keep up the disguise I took to doctoring, and I came down to this quiet place, as there wouldn't be much to do in the medical line. I'd put some money by before I got into trouble, and was living quiet and happy till these two ladies found me out. I’ve tried always to keep out of their sight, so they shouldn't give me away, but as I was afraid they'd see me after all one day, I've been trying to sell the practice and go abroad. If I hadn't been so flustered by their coming here and accusing me of murdering you, I shouldn't have said what I did, and I humbly ask their pardon for it."
"So it seems you've been carrying on a bogus practice in my name. Well, if I can't clap you in prison for that I'll see if I can't send you back as an escaped convict."
"Oh, doctor, do let me go! I'll leave the country at once, and you shan't ever hear no more of me." And he grovelled abjectly at Innes's feet.
"Oh, let him go!" Mrs. Innes pleaded.
"Very well, then; but as soon as I get to London I go straight to Scotland Yard, and tell them all about you. Now get out! You've got a day's start."
As the ex-convict shuffled out of the room I made a movement to go also, but Innes stopped me.
"Don't go, Dr. Wilkinson," said he. "I owe you an apology for what passed between us last week. I thought you were in league with that scoundrel, so I told you I was going back to London, but I only laid low and waited until I found he had returned. It's just four years since I was doctor on board the ship of which he was purser. I had a kind of a sunstroke at Buenos Ayres, and was picked up in the street and taken to a hospital; and meanwhile the ship sailed without me, for I had lost my memory, and couldn’t say anything about myself—I only remembered my name by the mark on my linen!
‘‘Well, I had to do something, so I went up country and got work on a cattle-ranch, and eventually I got all right again; but by the time I had saved some money and began to think of coming home, nearly three years had gone. I wrote twice to you, mother, but never got an answer. I found when I reached home you had moved twice, and I couldn’t trace you. I was very worried, of course, at that; and what was worse was the seeing my name in the 'Medical Directory' as in practice at this place. I really thought my brain was affected when I read that! I never suspected the truth until I took a run down here and made some inquiries. He might at least have pronounced my name properly. Hulloa! What's that?"
There was a sound of galloping, and we all ran to the door as Jones, in frenzied haste, took flight in the pony-cart.
"A good riddance!" was Innes's benediction.
"By Jove, though, he never gave me my cheque!" I exclaimed.
"Oh, I'll see to that. I must take over the debts with the rest of the practice," laughed Innes.
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1929.
The longest-living author of this work died in 1943, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 80 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
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