"Do you mean to insinuate that I"m robbing you?" says the doc, frownin"
at him.
"No," says the Kid, takin" the check from me and handin" it to him, "I don"t blame a guy for tryin", but--"
I shut him off and dragged him downstairs before they was any hard feelin"s. We climbed in the doctor"s bus and at the Kid"s request, Miss Vincent come along with us. Then we went after the road record between Film City and the Hillcrest Sanitarium. I guess this doctor was born with a steerin" wheel in his hand, because we took some corners on that trip that would have worried a snake, and when he threw her in high, we breezed along so swift we could have made a bullet quit. Finally, we come to a great big buildin" all hedged off with an iron fence and if you"ve ever seen a souvenir post card with "Havin" a fine time. Wish you were here," on it, you know what it looked like.
The doctor tells me and Miss Vincent to wait in the office, and he goes out with the Kid. In about fifteen minutes he"s back and calls me over to a desk. They"s a long piece of paper there and he says to sit down and fill it out, but, after one flash at it, I asked him could I take it home to work over, because my fountain pen was better on sprints than long distance writin" and this looked like a good two-hour job.
He gives me another one of them North Pole stares and remarks that if the thing ain"t filled out at once, the Kid won"t be admitted to the sanitarium.
"He"s in now, ain"t he?" I comes back.
"Yes!" he snaps. "And he"ll be out, if that paper isn"t drawn up instantly!"
Miss Vincent giggles and hisses in my ear.
"They say the child is in London!" she pipes. "Sign that paper, curse you! We are in his power!"
Well, I seen I had to do a piece of writing so I grabbed up that paper and let the fountain pen go crazy. I give the Kid"s entire name, where he was born, what his people did to fool the almshouse, what was his mother"s maiden name and why, whether he went to church or Billy Sunday, was he white and could he prove it, who started the war and a lot of bunk like that. The guy who doped out the entrance examinations for that hospital must have been figurin" on how many he could keep _out_. When I run out of ink, I took out a copy of the _Sportin"
Annual_, tore off the Kid"s record and pasted it at the bottom of the page.
"How"s that?" I asks, pa.s.sin" it over.
"Very well," he says, glancin" at it. "Mister Scanlan is in room 45.
That will be one-fifty--a hundred and fifty!"
"The price," I says, gettin" dizzy. "Not your weight!"
"That"s the price," he tells me. "A hundred and fifty a week."
"I"m afraid the old bankroll is _too_ weak," I says,--"too weak for that, anyhow. Drag the Kid out of that bridal suite and let him sleep in the hall. I"ll--"
"Why, the idea!" b.u.t.ts in Miss Vincent. "You let him stay where he is, doctor. The money will be paid."
Before I could say anything, the door opens and in comes the dame that poses for all the magazine covers, dressed like a nurse. I never was much on describin"--I probably wouldn"t have got ten people to watch the battle of Gettysburg if I"d have been the press agent--but this was the kind of dame that all the wealthy patients fall in love with in the movies--yeh, and out of "em! The little white cap on top of her head looked like a dash of whipped cream on a peach sundae, and if you wouldn"t have blowed up the city hall for the smile she sent around the room, I feel sorry for you. She crosses over and, in pa.s.sin" me, she begs my pardon and threw that smile into high.
A hundred and fifty a week, eh? Well--I dives in my inside pocket.
"May I have your check, Mister--eh--ah--" pipes the doc.
"Green," I helps him out, "Johnny Green. Can you have a _check_? You said it!" I sits down and writes one out.
"Why this is for three hundred dollars!" he busts out, lookin" at it.
"Even so, brother," I grins, stealin" a slant at the Venus de California. "That"s for me and the Kid. Gimme a room next to his and--"
"Do you think this is a hotel?" he frowns at me.
"I should care!" I tells him. "Let me in--that"s all _I_ want!"
With that the nurse remarks that the Kid is ready to see us, so me and Miss Vincent folleys her down the hall and she opens a door and calls in,
"Visitors, Mister Scanlan!"
"Yeh?" pipes the Kid in a show-em-the exit voice. "Ah--can I have a drink of--ah--water?"
"Certainly," she says. "I"ll bring it now."
"Don"t rush it!" says the Kid. "It might curdle! Wait till the attendance falls off a bit!"
She laughs--and Miss Vincent didn"t.
"Oho!" whispers the pet of the movies. "Like that, eh?"
We go in the room, and there"s Scanlan layin" in the whitest bed I even seen in my life and lookin" about as miserable as a millionaire"s nephew on the day his uncle dies. There"s about three hundred pillows under his head and neck, his arm is all bandaged up and beside the bed is a table with a set of flowers on it.
And then there was that nurse!
"Pretty soft!" I says.
The Kid grins and then twists around to Miss Vincent and groans.
"Does it hurt much, you poor dear?" she says.
"I wonder how I stand it!" pipes the Kid, keepin" his face from me.
"Can I get you anything?" she asks him after a minute.
"Well," answers the Kid, "if I did want something we could send Johnny for it." He looks at me meanin"ly. "Go out and git the right time!"
he tells me. "And while you"re at it--take lots of it!"
I went outside and closed the door. I remembered bein" in a hospital once, where they was examinin" guys for nerves, and one of the tests was. .h.i.ttin" "em in the knee with a book and watchin" if their legs flew out. I don"t remember the name of the book, but I figured on takin" a chance. I breezed out to the desk in the hall and filled out one of them entry blanks about myself, and then I dug up the doctor.
"Doc," I says, "I wish you"d gimme the East and West, there"s somethin"
the matter with my nerve. I know you can fix me up, if anybody can, because you got so much yourself."
"Just what is the East and West?" he asks me.
"Why, look me over!" I explains. "I wanna see what I need or should get rid of."
He leads me in a little room to one side, and goes over me like a lawyer lookin" for a clause in a contract he can bust. He looks at my tongue till it begin to quiver from exposure to the air; he clocks my pulse at a mile, two miles and over the jumps; he stuck a telephone like you see in the foreign movies over my heart and listened in on the internal gossip for twenty minutes; he walloped me on the chest with the best he had and made me sing a song called "Ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah!" Then he shakes his head and tells me to put on my coat.
"You"re one of the healthiest specimens I ever examined!" he says.
"There"s absolutely nothing the matter with you."
"Well, that"s certainly tough, doc," I tells him, "because I sure want to win one of them rooms like Scanlan has. I--wait a minute!" I hollers, gettin" a flash. "You didn"t gimme the book test!"
I hops over to the desk and grabs up a book off it. It was a big thick one called "Paralysis to Pneumonia," and was written by a couple of Greeks named "Symptoms and Therapeutics." I never heard of the thing before, and I wished it had been "Uncle Tom"s Cabin" or somethin" like that, but I took a chance.