“I have often heard Dr. Chandler speak of you,” said the doctor, with an involuntary smile, as he recalled several of the good stories that his predecessor had told him of the driver’s peculiarities.
“An’ why w’u’dn’t he?” the Irishman replied. “It’s more nor wanst I had to help him out of trouble. An’ never a worrd we had in all the months he drove out wid me. But it ’sll be some aisy little job we’ll have now, I’m thinkin‘s—a sun-stroke, maybe, or a kid that’s got knocked down by a scorcher, or a thrifle of that kind; you’ll be able to attend to that yourself aisy enough, no doubt.”
To this the young Southerner made no response, for his mind was busy in going over the antidotes for various poisons. Then he aroused himself and shook his shoulders, and laughed at his own preoccupation.
The Irishman did not approve of this. “An’ of coorse," he continued, “it may be a scrap 'twixt a ginny and a Polander; or maybe, now, a coon has gone for a chink wid a razzer, and sliced him most in two, I dunno'.”
Then he clanged the bell unexpectedly, and swerved off the track and down a side street toward the river.
The doctor soon found a curious crowd flattening their noses against the windows of a drug-store on a corner of the Boulevard. He sprang off as the driver slowed down to turn and back up.
A policeman stood in the doorway of the pharmacist’s, swinging his club by its string as he kept the children outside. He drew back to let the young surgeon pass, saying, as he did so: “It’s no use now, I think, Doctor. You are too late.”
The body of the man lay flat on the tile pavement of the shop. He was decently dressed, but his shoes were worn and patched. He was a very large man, too, stout even for his length. His cravat had been untied and his collar had been opened. His face was covered with a torn handkerchief.
As the doctor dropped on his knees by the side of the body, the druggist’s clerk came from behind the prescription counter—a thin, undersized, freckled youngster, with short red hair and a trembling voice.
“He’s dead, ain’t he?” asked this apparition.