"Don't worry. There are worse things in the world than cutting an appointment for good and sufficient reasons. You will get back your balance when things get normal again. I have no complaint to make anyway. You have kept up the professional end splendidly until now. What you need is a good long vacation and I am going to pack you off on one at the earliest opportunity. Do you want me to meet Captain Annersley for you tomorrow?" he switched off to ask.
Larry shook his head.
"No, I'll meet him myself, thank you. It is my job. I am not going to flunk it. If he is Ruth's husband I am going to be the first to shake hands with him."
CHAPTER XXXIV
IN WHICH TWO MASSEYS MEET IN MEXICO
And while things were moving toward their crisis for Larry and Ruth another drama was progressing more or less swiftly to its conclusion down in Vera Cruz. Alan Massey had found his cousin in a wretched, vermin haunted shack, nursed in haphazard fashion by a slovenly, ignorant half-breed woman under the ostensible professional care of a mercenary, incompetent, drunken Mexican doctor who cared little enough whether the dog of an American lived or died so long as he himself continued to get the generous checks from a certain newspaper in New York City. The doctor held the credulity of the men who mailed those checks in fine contempt and proceeded to feather his nest valiantly while his good luck continued, going on many a glorious spree at the paper's expense while Dick Carson went down every day deeper into the valley of the shadow of death.
With the coming of Alan Massey however a new era began. Alan was apt to leave transformation of one sort or another in his wake. It was not merely his money magic though he wielded that magnificently as was his habit and predilection, spent Mexican dollars with a superb disregard of their value which won from the natives a respect akin to awe and wrought miracles wherever the golden flow touched. But there was more than money magic to Alan Massey's performance in Vera Cruz. There was also the magic of his dominating, magnetic personality. He was a born master and every one high or low who crossed his path recognized his rightful ascendency and hastened to obey his royal will.
His first step was to get the sick man transferred from the filthy hovel in which he found him to clean, comfortable quarters in an ancient adobe palace, screened, airy, spacious. The second step was to secure the services of two competent and high priced nurses from Mexico City, one an American, the other an English woman, both experienced, intrepid, efficient. The third step taken simultaneously with the other two was to dismiss the man who masqueraded as a physician though he was nothing in reality but a cheap charlatan fattening himself at the expense of weakness and disease. The man had been inclined to make trouble at first about his unceremonious discharge. He had no mind to lose without a protest such a convenient source of unearned increment as those checks represented. He had intended to get in many another good carouse before the sick man died or got well as nature willed. But a single interview with Alan Massey sufficed to lay his objections to leaving the case. In concise and forcible language couched in perfect Spanish Alan had made it clear that if the so-called doctor came near his victim again he would be shot down like a dog and if Carson died he would in any case be tried for man slaughter and hanged on the spot. The last point had been further punctuated by an expressive gesture on the speaker's part, pointing to his own throat accompanied by a significant little gurgling sound. The gesture and the gurgle had been convincing. The man surrendered the case in some haste. He did not at all care for the style of conversation indulged in by this tall, unsmiling, green-eyed man. Consequently he immediately evaporated to all intents and purposes and was seen no more. The new physician put in charge was a different breed entirely, a man who had the authentic gift and passion for healing which the born doctor always possesses, be he Christian or heathen, gypsy herb mixer or ten thousand dollar specialist. Alan explained to this man precisely what was required of him, explained in the same forcible, concise, perfect Spanish that had banished the other so completely. His job was to cure the sick man. If he succeeded there would be a generous remuneration. If he failed through no fault of his there would still be fair remuneration though nothing like what would be his in case of complete recovery. If he failed through negligence—and here the expressive gesture and the gurgle were repeated—. The sentence had not needed completion. The matter was sufficiently elucidated. The man was a born healer as has been recorded but even if he had not been he would still have felt obliged to move heaven and earth so far as in him lay to cure Dick Carson. Alan Massey's manner was persuasive. One did one's best to satisfy a person who spoke such Spanish and made such ominous gestures. One did as one was commanded. One dared do no other.
As for the servants whom Alan rallied to his standard they were slaves rather than servants. They recognized in him their preordained master, were wax to his hands, mats to his feet. They obeyed his word as obsequiously, faithfully and unquestioningly as if he could by a clap of his lordly hands banish them to strange deaths.
They talked in low tones about him among themselves behind his back. This was no American they said. No American could command as this green-eyed one commanded. No American had such gift of tongues, such gestures, such picturesque and varied and awesome oaths. No American carried small bright flashing daggers such as he carried in his inner pockets, nor did Americans talk glibly as he talked of weird poisons, not every day drugs, but marvelous, death dealing concoctions done up in lustrous jewel-like capsules or diluted in sparkling, insidious gorgeous hued fluids. The man was too wise—altogether too wise to be an American. He had traveled much, knew strange secrets. They rather thought he knew black art. Certainly he knew more of the arts of healing than the doctor himself. There was nothing he did not know, the green-eyed one. It was best to obey him.