BOOK I
FATHER AND SON
CHAPTER I
MR. TRUPP
When in the late seventies young Mr. Trupp, abandoning the use of Lister's spray, but with meticulous antiseptic precautions derived from the great man at University Hospital, performed the operation of variotomy on the daughter of Sir Hector Moray, and she lived, his friends called it a miracle, his enemies a lucky fluke.
All were agreed that it had never been done before, and the more foolish added that it would never be done again.
Sir Hector was a well-known soldier; and the operation made the growing reputation of the man who performed it.
William Trupp was registrar at the Whitechapel at the time, and a certainty for the next staff appointment. When, therefore, while the columns of the Lancet were still hot with the controversy that raged round the famous case, the young man told Sir Audrey Rivers, whose house-surgeon he had been, that he meant to leave London and migrate to the country, the great orthopædist had said in his grim way to this his favourite pupil:
"If you do, I'll never send you a patient."
Even in his young days Mr. Trupp was remarkable for the gruff geniality which characterized him to the end.
"Very well, sir," he said with that shrewd smile of his. "I must go all the same."
Next day Sir Audrey read that his understudy was engaged to Evelyn, only daughter of Sir Hector Moray of Pole.