“When it’s yours.” The specialist was finding it hard to keep his temper. The man had worn him out in the week he had been at the sanitarium. It had been harder to manage him than a spoiled child or a lunatic. He had had to humor him, cajole him, entreat him, in a way that galled his professional dignity, and now to have the man deliberately and publicly kill himself in this fashion was almost beyond endurance. He tried hard to make his voice sound agreeable as well as determined when he launched his ultimatum. “But in the mean time Miss O’Leary will have to be removed from the case.”
“No, you don’t!” With a sweep of the giant hand the bedclothes were jerked from their roots, and a pair of heliotrope legs projected floorward. It took the strength of all the three present to hold him back and replace the covering. The magnate sputtered and fumed. “First nurse you put on here after the boss goes—I’ll die on her hands in ten minutes just to get even with you. That’s what I’ll do. And what’s more—I’ll come back to haunt the both of you. Take away my boss—just after we get things going pleasantly. Spoil a poor man’s prospects of dying cheerful! Haven’t you any heart, man? And you, ma’am?” this to the superintendent of nurses. “By the Lord Harry! you’re a woman—you ought to have a little sympathy!” The aggressiveness died out of the voice, and it took on the old wail Sheila had first heard.
“But you forget my professional responsibility in the matter—my principles as an honorable member of my profession. I cannot allow a patient of mine wilfully to endanger his life—even shorten it. You must understand that, Mr. Brandle.”
A look of amused toleration spread over the rubicund face. “Bless your heart, sonny, you’re not allowing me to shorten it one minute. The boss and I are prolonging it first-rate. Shouldn’t wonder if it would get to be so pleasant having her around I’d be working over union hours and forgetting to quit at all. I’m old enough to be your granddaddy, so take a bit of advice from me. When you can’t cure a patient, let ’em die their own way. Now run along, sonny. Good morning, ma’am.” And then to Sheila: “Get back to that locked door, the three bullet-holes, and the blood patch on the floor. I’ve got to know what’s on the other side before I touch one mouthful of that finnan haddie you promised me for breakfast.”
After that Old King Cole had his way. The doctors visited him as a matter of form, and Sheila improvised a chart, for he would not stand for having temperatures taken or pulses counted. “Cut it out, boss, cut it all out. We’re just going to have a good time, you and me.” And he smiled seraphically as he drummed on the spread:
“Old King Cole—diddy-dum-diddy-dum,
Was a merry old soul—diddy-dum-diddy-dum.”
On the second day Sheila introduced Peter Brooks into the “Keeping-On-Going Syndicate,” as the mammoth man termed their temporary partnership. Sheila had to take some hours off duty, and as the coal magnate absolutely refused to let another nurse cross his threshold, Peter seemed to be the only practical solution. She knew the two men would get on admirably. Peter could be counted on to understand and meet any emergency that might arise, while Old King Cole would be kept content. And Sheila was right.
“Say, we hit it off first-rate—ran together as smooth as a parcel o’ greased tubs,” the magnate confided to Sheila when she returned. “He told me a whole lot about you—what you did for him—and the nickname they’d given you—‘Leerie.’ I like that, but I like my name for you better. Eh, boss?”
Once admitted, Peter often availed himself of his membership in the syndicate. He made a third at their games, turned an attentive ear to the thriller or added his bit to the enlightenment of the conversation. And there wasn’t a topic from war to feminine-dress reform that they did not attack and thrash out among them with all the keenness and thoroughness of three alive and original minds.
“Puts me thinking of the days when I was switch boss at the Cassie Maguire Mine. Nothing but a shaver then, working up; nothing to do in the God-forsaken hole, after work, but talk. We just about settled the affairs of the world and gave the Lord Almighty advice into the bargain.” The mammoth man laughed a mammoth laugh. “And when we’d talked ourselves inside out we’d have some fiddling—always a fiddle among some of the boys. Never hear one of those old tunes that it don’t take me back to the Cassie Maguire and the way a fiddle would play the heart back into a lonely, homesick shaver.” He turned with a suspicious sniff to Sheila. “Come, boss, the chessboard. Peter’n’me are going to have another Verdun set-to. Only this time he’s German. See? And if you don’t mind, you might fill up our pipes and bring us our four-forty bowl.”