THE STORYTELLER.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 52, 10 June 1910, Page 6

THE STORYTELLER.

DAMOCLES'SCALPEE I. One evening, in the billiard room at Manning's, the conversation turned on doctors and the science of medicine. The famous Dr. Vail, of New York, was-a member of the party, but had little to say on the subject, save when some question was referred to him.

"Don't you think," said Harrison, "that undreamed-of crimes are hidden under the cloak of the medical •profession?"

Dr. Vail smiled; the question was hard!}' a new one.

"A doctor is human like a clergyman," Harrison went on. "Do you suppose his •profession can always stand above his worldly desires and ambitions ?" Or. Vail smiled again. "Between the professional and .the private life of the average physician, there is a barrier like the wall of China," he said. "Whatever his ambitions and petty aims may be, they are laid aside when he is sitting in his consulting-room or making his rounds. If you would care to hear a case in point, I will tell you of a strange ami melancholy experience of mine which I have never before told."

He threw away his cigar, although it was not half consumed, and in a voice which already showed signs of emotion he told the story that follows:

11. Two of my classmates, Sam Murchison and Arthur Gray, were devoted enemies from the time when they met as freshmen at the medical school. They were the two brightest students in the class, and each seemed to live in order to outdo the other in argument or performance. They were room-mates, and were inseparable, but each seemed loath to trust the other out of his sight, and they went about together like two wilysuspicious wolves.

One would gleefully fasten some hu : initiating joke upon the other, and the ensuing battle of repartee would be fast and furious. The vanquished combatant would smile with drawn lips and a glint in his eye that foretold future encounters. I believe there was never anything but cordial hatred for each other in their hearts.

When they graduated, Murchison took first honors,"'but Gray retaliated by winning the first appointment to the hospital attached to the college. Murchison accepted the second appointment, and Gray, as the ranking interne, made a perfect dog of him, I was fond of iboth men. Away from each other's influence, iboth were lovable and attractive above the average. Gray was handsome, brilliant and erratic, and had that easy and fascinating carelessness of the strict laws of morality which distinguishes the novelist's typical "man 01 the world." Murchison, on the other hand, possessed what Gray called a "hypertrophied conscience." I deplored their strange attitude toward each other, and looked forward eagerly to the day when their private practises should separate them; but Fate is inexorable when she sets her airadsupon a special object, and I suppose it was the most natural thing in the world that the two rivals opened a joint office. They prospered to a conspicuous degree, and were associated in some cerebrated cases, but there was no relaxation of their mutual enmity. It was the joke of the year when they took opposite sides in a deeply involved and bitter controversy in the columns of the medical journals, but they remained successiui colleagues. ■About three years after graduation, Murchison married Laura Washburn, and a new phase of ( the comedy began. Laura was pretty and accomplished, and under ordinary conditions might have been a good wife to Murchison; but she came—a weak-natured flighty vixen—as if sent by the Evil One to hasten the de- j struction of two lost souls.

Murchison seemed to accept it as entirely logical that Gray should vie with him "for her favor, and their wits were whetted to greater keenness. A stranger sitting at their dinner-taMe would have declared it a feast of humor and goodwill, 'but I have sat there in a cold sweat, harkening to the rumMing of the volcano and speculating as to the coming denouement.

The crash came without warning. One day I picked up my .paper and read that Gray and Laura had gone to Europe. I was shocked, but hardly surprised. I hastened to Murchison's house and -asked to see him, as a near friend. He welcomed me affectionately and talked freely, not as a man who is broken, tout as one who loses a game. His lips were held tighter and the lines around Ms mouth were perceptibly deeper. "Curse him, Harry!" he said. "1 thought he would play fair, but he has done me. I have played a clean hand with him, <but he cheated. If I ever see him again, I'll kill him!" After the initial shock had passed, and the maddening' nine-days' wonder was over, I had several talks with Murchison. I appealed to his .better judgment, and tried to show him that he was well rid of the pair, but his attitude did not change. He had decreed the death of Gray as coldly as a justice on the tbeneh.

After a year or more we heard that Gray and Laura had separated in Paris, and shortly after that we heard of Laura's death.

"Maybe he'll come back now," said Murchison grimly, "to play another hand with me!"

Gray came back, and Murehison began quietly adjusting his affairs, as if about to start on a "long journey. Hearing that Gray was in Philadelphia, I went there to beg him to leave the country Immediately, in order to avoid imminent catastrophe, although I felt grave fears that my solicitude would only have the result of precipitating the affair. Gray laughed heartily, as I had expected, and I believe he almost enjoyed the prospect of a tragedy. "I was going out to buy a hat this morning," he said dryly, "but it seems th.it I had better buy a gun and some ammunition!"

When he nonchalantly dropped the grave subject of concern, and proposed

that we should go up near the Canadian line for a week's shooting, i welcomed the idea. To get several hundred miles! of railroad and a belt of primeval forest between him and Murchison was a rcnel in itself. So we made the long northward journey, and I took care that Murchison should hear nothing of our going. We fished and hunted and smoked and talked, and it was like old times and college days. Not for many years had Gray seemed in suvh good spirits. Once or twice he spcke casually of Murchison in relation to some college .prank, and we boih almost forgot the dark cloud on the horizon.

When our holiday was about half over, I arranged with the guide to go up the lakes for about fifty miles to _ look for moose. Gray demurred, and said _he felt more like resting where he was; but my hunting blood was up. and it was at last agreed that I should go off for three days while he remained in camp.

Pierre, my guide, and I had killed a bull moose and were gloating over it when a messenger found our bivouac. The letter he brought me read: Dear Harry,—l am sick, and I believe I have appendicitis. I am going over to Fort Frayne at once to look for the doctor. Come and look me up if you can.—Arthur Gray. We got out the c;Mioe and paddled all day and all night. At Millstown I hired a buckboard and rlvjve to Fort Frayne, arriving there r'.nu: *en o'clock in the morning. I went at once to the village apothecary, and asked him if he had heard anything of Gray. The man knew all about him; he was at Dr. Frisbie's house, and it was hoped that an operation might save him, although some time had been lost, and—as the apothecary put it, wagging his head —"he was a very sick man." Yes, Dr. Frisbie was a surgeon, and had been going to operate, but it was discovered that a noted New York surgeon was staying at the inn, and Dr. Frisbie had asked him to do the job. So inevitable are the processes of fate that one seems to anticipate and sense them by a strange telephathy. When that rustic apothecary uttered the words, "a noted New York surgeon," an icy shudder passed over me, and I knew who the surgeon was. I hurried to, the house of the country physician, and sent in my card. "Tell Dr. Frisbie that I am a friend of Dr. Gray, and would like to see him," I said to the maid servant.

She returned presently and told me that the operation was in progress, but the doctors would be glad to x have my assistance.

In through the poorly furnished house I went, and into a mockery of an operating room. In the doctor's office, ■with its roll-top desk covered with phials of pills and drummers' samples, and its galvanic battery, anatomical charts, and other abominations calculated to impress the rural mind, was the old-fashioned adjustable oak table, covered with a rubber sheet. On this lay the anaesthetised patient, Arthur Gray. ' , At the patient's head sat Dr. SVisbie, with the right of realised ambition in his eyes, holding the cone upon tfiw face and glancing with anxiety at the oxygen tank twice every minute. Perhaps the ■poor half-starved disciple of Aesculapius had not seen an operation of the magnitude of an appendectomy since his college days. The old musty office recked with that, noisome potpourri of idoform, carbolic acid and what not, but over all floated; the sickening, pungent vapor of ether; giving me that deathly, sinking sensation' whicli went far in my college days ; toward making me a general practitioner instead' of a surgeon. Bustling nervously about the room, was a stout, middleaged nurse, dressed like a cook, but wearing an expression of religious devotion upon her countenance. Probably the good creatures' previous experience had 'been chiefly in houses of maternity, and on the scene of a major operation, under the eye of a great surgeon, she quailed miserably. Ah, howl delay the telling of it! At the right side of the patient stood Samuel Murehlson. As I stepped into the room he locked at me steadily, and spoke as calmly as ever. '•'Dr. Vail,' 3 " he said, "Dr. Frisbie has decided that 'only a prompt operation can save the life of Dr. Gray. He has asxed me to operate, and I am now about to make the incision." I bowed to Frisbie, and looked again at Murchison,. peering into his eyes. He was the cool and dispassionate surgeon; I could detect no shadow of ulterior design in'his face or manner. The nurse exposed the abdomen of the pa-, tient and sterilised the surface, under the direction of the operator. He took a bright scalpel from a tray, and quickly presented its edge to the flesh of his enemy at Mcßumey's point. The blade seemed almost to recoil, and his face became ghastly. His eyes, flew to mine, and as our glances met he looked down again, and, with;-a stiffening of his whole frame, leaned forward and made the incision quickly and cleanly. As the blood flowed from' the wound he grew whiter, and I thought he would faint. _ ] <; I never let my nerves run away like this 'before," he said apologetically to the nurse. "I've been, working too hard of late."

■After that ho set to work feverishly. One after another he seized the forceps and nipped ofl" the vessels that vmwe pouring; out the life-blood of the object of his cherished hate. As he tied the arteries, his hands shook and he fumbled the ligatures clumsily, ibut he was too consummate an artist to blunder. He separated the muscle fibres delicately with the blunt handle of the scalpel until the glistening peritoneum was exposed; this he picked up with the forceps and deftly snipped with the scissors. Frisbie was spellbound, and I wellnigh forgot the tragedy of the situation in my admiration of the display of technique. For the moment, the artist was at his easel, and no personal emotion could mar the canvas. His hands no longer trembled perceptibly, and some color had returned to his face. AVith his finger he raised the appendix gorged and gangrenous; he ligated it, excised it, and then seared' the edges with the actual cautery.

As he began the retrograde process back towards the surface, his agitation seemed to return. The critical phases of the operation were over, ami his mind

was back again to the man under the sheet; but lie did not look up, and he worked with the same precision. Tke stentorious breathing of the patient plainly annoyed him, and presently he turned to Frisbie and warned him that the blood was becoming darker in color, and that more oxygen must be given. Once again he turned toward the country doctor, and asked him if he were carefully following the patient's pulse. Frisbie was a bit nettled by the question, and assured him that the patient was doing satisfactorily. The wound was soon closed, and the tiny damps, which Murchison preferred to sutures, were deftly applied. _ The dressing comes' as a sort of benediction, proclaiming an end to the stress of the Operation, and Murchison seemed to feel some relief. He looked at me across the body of Gray, and there was a question in his look. I nodded solemnly to him in commendation of his victory; I knew that I had been a witness of one of the greatest battles a soul ever fought with itself.

Frisbie no longer held the cone over the patient's face, but sat awaiting orders. Suddenly he dropped the cone and the oxygen-tube, and turned to Murchison in terror. "Doctor," he gasped weakly, "he has stopped breathingr "My God!" cried Murchison, and seized the wrist of the patient, feeling for the pulse. The lips and face were cyanotic, and the eves were glassy; no sign of breath or heart-beat could be discovered. Then we three poor, helpless wretches went to work. We .pumped oxygen into the lungs and strychnia into the blood, and we tried every known process of re.ex shock and artificial respiration. We were all more or less panic-stricken and hysterical. In our hearts we knew the truth, but none of us would admit it until the old nurse said in her shrill voice:

"Dear me! The poor gentleman is dead!"

Frisbie tore arond like a frantic woman. Murchison sank limply into his chair. I went over to him, put my arm over his shoulders and took one of his hands. "It can't be helped, old fellow," I said. "You did your best for him." He pressed my hand very slightly and leaned heavily against me; then he let go my hand, and his head fell farther forward.

I loosened his clothing and felt his pulse. The heart action was hardly perceptible,' but there was a dull beat like the hate which had throbbed in his brain until Nemesis had relieved him 01 ner trust. Eegaininw some of that artificial composure which is a part of the business of our profession, I directed Frisbie and the nurse to prepare a bed for Murchison, so that we might properly attend him.

"Good heavens, doctor, does he take it so hard?" said Fri'sbitf.

My head was bowed, and my mind ran back over the brief but turbulent history of the two before me—the broken man and the lifeless .lift of clay. Without looking up, I said simply: "Thev we're' ehtrnis at college."