Lang caught this amazing introduction, and if he had been less wet, less ruffled, less indignant, he would probably have instantly denied it. As it was, he shut his mouth, and limply shook hands with the three or four men who greeted him warmly.
He knew well the name of Doctor Robert Long, of course, and was thoroughly acquainted with that eminent Chicago specialist’s success in nervous diseases. The resemblance of the name to his own had caused confusion before, and now he recollected that Doctor Long was said to be spending a vacation in the South, and might really be in Mobile.
The humor of the thing suddenly quenched his wrath. He had been half kidnaped, but he had turned the joke on his captors. Let them take what they had got, he thought. He would look at their patient, charge them nothing, and go ashore again, recommending a good Mobile physician. He knew well that Doctor Long would never dream of accepting any such casual call.
He glanced sharply at the men before him, and up and down the steamer’s dim-lit deck. Scarred planking, dirty paint, rusty metal confirmed his suspicions. Whatever this ship was, she surely was no yacht. The man they called “Captain” stood at his elbow, tall, rough-featured, mustached, dripping in his wet oilskins; and another, dimly seen, showed a smooth face, owlish with large tortoise-shell glasses. Carroll stood in front, looking anxiously on. They were all waiting for him.
“Well, where’s the patient?” he said sharply.
At once they were all alert to serve him. They guided him down the stairs to the saloon—a long, dingy, shabby cabin, with grimy white paint, and the usual fixed table, chairs, and a number of stateroom doors opening from either side. There was a strong odor of cigar smoke and spirits.
“The doctor’s wet, Jerry. Give him a touch of something, can’t you?” exclaimed Carroll, bustling to take Lang’s dripping raincoat. Before Lang could decline, the captain had produced a couple of bottles from a cupboard, and was pouring strong doses into a rack of glasses on the table; and, in spite of the doctor’s abstinence, the rest of the company swallowed their drinks with alacrity.
“Better have some, doctor. It’s the good stuff. We called at Havana last week,” Carroll advised.
Lang again declined, and looked over the company as they drank standing by the table. Jerry, the captain, was tall and lean, with a long mouth, bad teeth, a truculent eye, and a seaman’s heavy, horny hands. He with the big spectacles, Lloyd or Floyd, was a smooth-faced, neatly dressed man of over thirty, cool and contemptuous looking. Carroll looked more of a gentleman than the rest of them. It was an odd company, this “yachting” crew, and Lang thought ironically of Eva’s hope that this might be the beginning of a wealthy practice.
One of the doors opened just then, and another man came out, whom he had not seen before. He came with silent swiftness like a cat, glancing furtively at the newcomer. He was not over twenty, lean and slouching, with a nervous hatchet face and a bad-colored skin. Lang recognized that skin tint that comes of cocaine and heroin. He had seen that type of youth occasionally in his hospital work, generally in connection with bullet wounds. It was not a type likely to be found at sea, he thought, the youthful dope-addicted gunman and gangster; and his presence threw a point of light, perhaps, on the whole unusual company.
Nobody introduced the young man, who slipped behind the table and poured himself a drink, then lighted a cigarette. Carroll put down his glass.
“This way, doctor,” he said, and reopened the door from which the young gunman had just emerged. Lang followed him in, and the others trooped after.
It was a rather large stateroom, painted white, with one berth, a rattan chair, and the usual basin, taps and stand. The port was open, letting in a cool, moist freshness; and Lang’s eyes instantly fixed on the berth’s occupant.
It was a big man, a man of perhaps sixty, with a great, rugged face and short, grizzled hair. His eyes were shut and sunken; he was considerably emaciated; he seemed to be asleep. A gray blanket covered him to the chin, and one huge, inanimate arm lay outside.
The physician’s instinct awoke in Lang as he bent over the cot. He touched the wrist a moment, pushed back an eyelid to look at the pupil, sniffed at the man’s lips, and took out his clinical thermometer. While it rested under the patient’s armpit he felt carefully over the skull in search of a possible wound.
“How long has he been like this?” he asked.
“Nearly a week now,” Carroll returned.
“How did it start? What brought it on? Did he have any injury—any great shock?”
“No injury. You might call it a shock, perhaps,” said Carroll. “It was ashore. He dropped like dead; we thought he was dead, at first. We brought him aboard, and now we’ve been expecting him to come to for days.”
“Can you bring him to, doctor? We’ve got to have him brought to,” put in the captain, anxiously.
“No, I can’t,” said Lang, crisply.
“He isn’t likely to die, is he?” asked Carroll.
“Extremely so.”
“Hell!” the captain exclaimed in disgust. “Can’t you do something to revive him—electricity or some kind of stimulant? We’ll send ashore for anything you need. We’ve got to wake him up, enough to talk a little anyway, before he dies. That’s what we got you here for.”
“You want me to rouse him violently, if I can. What if it cost him his life?” Lang asked quietly.
“Even at the risk of his life,” said Floyd with a sort of energetic coldness.
Lang looked curiously at the speaker, who looked back unblinking.
“No physician would attempt such a thing,” he said. “I want to give this man a thorough examination. The room’s too full. Clear it out.”
They went out obediently, and Lang sat down behind the closed door and studied the unconscious figure afresh. It was not at all his special sort of case; Long of Chicago would really have been the man, but he knew well enough how to make his diagnosis.
He tested carefully the knee jerk, the ankle clonus, all the reflexes, finding nothing out of the way; he took the pulse more carefully, listened to the breathing, and then bared the body and went over the whole surface of the skin. Several ribs had been broken within a few months, he noted, and knitted rather badly; and he discovered a large, fresh burn on the left arm, which he dressed. But these injuries could not account for this prolonged coma, and he could find no trace of others.
A tiny clot of blood on the brain surface might produce these symptoms, but only the X-ray could discover it. It might be a purely nervous case; a neurasthenia, a brain shock, such as is called shell shock in war. He felt doubtful for he had made no special study of these puzzling maladies.
And he wondered all at once why these men wished the patient to be brought to speech, even at the risk of his life.
He was aroused from his deep thought by a gust of cold wind and mist driving through the porthole. He went to close it, and saw at once that the wind must have changed—or the steamer moved. With his hand on the steel-ringed glass he paused, startled, for he could hear the thrash and beat of the propeller astern, throbbing swiftly, and he felt the vibration of the engines under his feet.
Perhaps they were heading landward, to put him ashore; but he felt a deadly certainty that it was not so. He tried the door. It was locked on the outside. He beat on the panels—louder—kicked the door and shouted. But it was fully five minutes before the door was unfastened and Carroll appeared.
“Where are we going? Are you going to land me? Let me pass!” Lang exclaimed, furiously.
“Hold on, doctor. We can’t land you right now, but—— Hold on!”
Blindly angry, and half scared as well, Lang forced past him, crossed the cabin, and rushed up to the deck.
It was dark. Spray and mist drove in the air and he could see nothing overside, but from the force and freshness of the wind, and the salty smell, and the sense of space, and the great heave and fall of the ship, he knew instantly that they were no longer in Mobile Bay, but well out to sea.
He found Carroll and the captain at his elbow, and Floyd came hurrying from forward.
“You were to put me ashore at Mobile. You’re heading out into the Gulf. Turn round at once and put me ashore!” Lang stormed.
“Don’t get excited, doctor. You’ll get ashore all right.”
“You wouldn’t leave a patient like this?”
“You’re all right here, and we’ll pay you well.”
These soothing remarks only infuriated Lang the more.
“You damned kidnapers!” he spluttered, and, his excitement getting out of control, he drove a right-hand lunge at the man nearest him.
It was the captain, who dodged it neatly, laughing. Lang smashed out at Carroll, who ducked. Three pairs of hands gripped the unfortunate physician, and urged him toward the stairway again, in spite of his kicks and struggles.
“Easy, doctor. You mustn’t beat up your officers,” they adjured him.
They were extraordinarily patient with him, though he kicked their shins and struggled in an almost foaming rage. They piloted him down the stair, through the saloon and into a stateroom, still directing upon him a stream of the most mollifying speeches.
“We had your room all ready for you, doctor,” said Carroll, as they held him pinioned in the middle of the floor. “Here’s your bag. There’s pajamas laid out on the berth, and there’s ice water and rum and soda water, and if you need anything more in the night, just shout for it. You’ll be called for breakfast. Be calm.”
They left him with a chorus of cheerful “Good nights,” and he heard the door bolt click on the outside.