The Citadel Read Free Page A

doctor, that in strict orthodoxy the tablespoonfuls should pass down the oesophagus three times a day.’ He paused, becoming, with his assumed air of confidence, more blandly offensive than ever. ‘Now tell me, doctor, what’s in it? Spirit of nitre by the smell. Wonderful stuff, sweet spirit of nitre. Wonderful, wonderful, my dear doctor! Carminative, stimulant, diuretic, and you can swill it by the tubful. Don’t you remember what it says in the little red book? When in doubt give spirit of nitre, or is it pot. lod. Tut! Tut! I seem to have forgotten some of my essentials.’
    Again there was a silence in the wooden shed broken only by the drumming of the rain upon the tin roof. Suddenly Denny laughed, a mocking appreciation of the blank expression on Andrew’s face. He said derisively:
    ‘Science apart, doctor, you might satisfy my curiosity. Why have you come here?’
    By this time Andrew’s temper was rising rapidly. He answered grimly.
    ‘My idea was to turn Drineffy into a health resort – a sort of spa, you know.’
    Again Denny laughed. His laugh was an insult, which made Andrew long to hit him. ‘Witty, witty, my dear doctor. The true Scots steamroller humour. Unfortunately I can’t recommend the water here as being ideally suited for a spa. As to the medical gentlemen – my dear doctor, in this valley they’re the rag-tag and bobtail of a glorious, a truly noble profession.’
    ‘Including yourself?’
    ‘Precisely!’ Denny nodded. He was silent a moment, contemplating Andrew from beneath his sandy eyebrows. Then he dropped his mocking irony, his ugly features turned morose again. His tone, though bitter, was serious. ‘ Look here, Manson! I realise you’re just passing through on your way to Harley Street, but in the meantime there are one or two things about this place you ought to know. You won’t find it conform to the best traditions of romantic practice. There’s no hospital, no ambulance, no X-rays, no anything. If you want to operate you use the kitchen table. You wash up afterwards at the scullery bosh. The sanitation won’t bear looking at. In a dry summer the kids die like flies with infantile cholera. Page, your boss, was a damn good old doctor, but he’s finished now, finished by overwork, and’ll never do a hand’s turn again. Nicholls, my owner, is a tight little money-chasing midwife. Bramwell, the Lung Buster, knows nothing but a few sentimental recitations and the Songs of Solomon. As for myself, I better anticipate the gay tidings – I drink like a fish. Oh! and Jenkins, your tame druggist, does a thriving trade, on the side, in little lead pills for female ills. I think that’s about all. Come, Hawkins, we’ll go.’ He called the mongrel and moved heavily towards the door. There he paused, his eyes ranging again from the bottle on the counter to Manson. His tone was flat, quite uninterested. ‘ By the way, I should look out for enteric in Glydar Place if I were you. Some of these cases aren’t exactly typical.’
    ‘Ping’ went the door again. Before Andrew could answer Doctor Philip Denny and Hawkins disappeared into the wet darkness.

Chapter Three
    It was not his lumpy flock mattress which caused Andrew to sleep badly that night, but the growing anxiety of the case in Glydar Place. Was it enteric? Denny’s parting remark had started a fresh train of doubt and misgiving in his already uncertain mind. Dreading that he had overlooked some vital symptom he restrained himself with difficulty from rising and revisiting the case at an unearthly hour of the morning. Indeed, as he tossed and turned through the long restless night he came to ask himself if he knew anything of medicine at all.
    Manson’s nature was extraordinarily intense. Probably he derived this from his mother, a Highland woman who, in her childhood, had watched the Northern lights leap through the frosted sky from her home in Ullapool. His father, John Manson, a small Fifeshire farmer, had been