How's Rendal getting on?'
Captain Holditch, skipper of the Carnatic, put this question next morning to the doctor, and was somewhat surprised by the answer.
'Oh, Rendal's all right. That is to say, he will be all right. Just now he's suffering from shock. My advice—supposing, of course, you can spare him—is to pack him straightaway off to his people on a week's leave. In a week he'll be fit as a fiddle.' The doctor paused and added, ''Wish I could feel as easy about the millionaire.'
'Why, what's the matter with him? 'Struck me he pulled round wonderfully, once you'd brought him to. He talked as cheery as a grig.
'H'm—yes,' said the doctor; 'he has been talking like that ever since, only he hasn't been talking sense. Calls me names for keeping him in bed, and wants to get out and repair that stanchion. I told him it was mended. "Nothing on earth is the matter with me," he insisted, till I had to quiet him down with bromide. By the way, did you send off any account of the accident?'
'By wireless? No; I took rather particular pains to stop that—gets into the papers, only frightens the family and friends, who conclude things to be ten times worse than they are. Plenty of time at Southampton. Boat-express'll take him home ahead of the scare?'
'Lives in Park Lane, doesn't he?—that big corner house like a game-pie? . . . Ye-es, you were thoughtful, as usual. . . . Only some one might have been down to the docks to meet him. 'Wish I knew his doctor's address. Well, never mind—I'll fix him up so that he reaches Park Lane, anyway.'
'He ought to do something for Rendal,' mused Captain Holditch.
'He will, you bet, when his head is right—that's if a millionaire's head is ever right,' added the doctor, who held radical opinions on the distribution of wealth.
The captain ignored this. He never talked politics even when ashore.