CHAPTER VIII
DR. CUSTRIN
It was not until dinner that evening that I had the opportunity of meeting Dr. Custrin. The Naomi was steaming along amid the gorgeous pageantry of sunset and the warm glow of the dying day was warring with the soft lights of the electric candles on the dinner-table when I came in to the saloon. Garth introduced me to the doctor. He was a sleek, smooth young man with hair like black satin and a beautifully trained small black moustache. His hands and feet were small and well-made and there would have been a touch of effeminacy about him but for his otherwise manly bearing, his bold black eyes and pleasant voice. A certain narrowness of the eyes and a curl of the nostrils told me, who have an eye for such things, that, probably, as his name indicated, he was of Jewish extraction. In conversation I elicited that he had been born in Mauritius, educated at Cape Town, and had taken his degree at King's College Hospital in London. Garth's New York office it appeared, had picked him up at Colon where he was studying Colonel Goethals' wonderful arrangements for the extermination of yellow fever and malaria.
Lawless and Mackay, the chief engineer, a sententious Scot, who opened his mouth only to utter a platitude or to put food or drink into it, dined with us. Garth made me sit next to Marjorie who looked ravishing in a white lace evening frock.
"Put the two war veterans together!" the baronet commanded. "My little girl here," he explained to me, "drove a car at the front. She has the Military Medal."
"Daddy!" expostulated Marjorie and a warm flush coloured her cheeks.
"I would never have given my consent," Garth added, "but she just didn't ask me for it!"
"My dear old thing," said the girl. "You make me look ridiculous by bragging about my silly little trips around the bases when I'm sure Dr. Custrin or Major Okewood saw a hundred times more of the war than I ever did!"
"I never got out of the base at the Cape," said the doctor. "The East African campaign kept us too busy for anybody to be spared."
"And I," was my retort, "never went back to France after the Somme!"