“I went down to the door, and there I found a four-wheeler with a man standing beside it. The door of the cab was shut, and there seemed to be two more men inside. This chap who’d got out—a youngish man—hailed me at once as though he’d bought the whole place.
“ ‘You Dr Congleton?’
“ ‘Damn your impertinence!’ I said to myself, ‘ringing people up at this hour, and talking like a bally drill-sergeant.’
“I told him politely I wasn’t old Congers, but that I’d make a good enough substitute for the likes of him.
“ ‘I tell you what it is,’ said the Johnnie, ‘I’ve brought a patient for Dr Congleton, a cousin of mine, and I’ve got a doctor here, too. I want to see Dr Congleton.’
“ ‘He’s probably in bed,’ I said, ‘but I’ll do just as well. I suppose he’s certified, and all that.’
“ ‘Oh, it’s all right,’ said the man, rather as though he expected me to say that it wasn’t. He looked a little doubtful what to do, and then I heard some one inside the cab call him. He stuck his head in the window and they confabbed for a minute, and then he turned to me and said, with the most magnificent air you ever saw, like a chap buying a set of diamond studs, ‘My friend here is a great personal friend of Dr Congleton, and it’s a damned—— I mean it’s an uncommonly delicate matter. We must see him.’
“ ‘Well, if you insist, I’ll see if I can get him,’ I said; ‘but you’d better come in and wait.’
“So the Johnnie opened the door of the cab, and there was a great hauling and pushing, my friend pulling an arm from the outside, and the doctor shoving from within, and at last they fetched out their patient. He was a tall man, in a very smart-looking, long, light top-coat, and a cap with a large peak shoved over his eyes, and he seemed very unsteady on his pins.
“ ‘Drunk, by George!’ I said to myself at first.