He looked at her critically.
"I can believe it. Temper adds nothing to your appearance. But, Doc, with your intelligence and experience, how did you come to rifle a man"s pocket with a witness in the room?"
She jumped to her feet.
"I won"t stand this! I don"t have to stand it!"
The Dago Duke crossed his legs leisurely.
"No--you don"t have to, but I believe I would if I were you. The fact is, Doc, I dropped in merely to make a little deal with you."
"Blackmail!" she cried furiously.
"In a way--yes. Strictly, I suppose, you might call it blackmail."
"You"re broke again--you want money!"
The Dago Duke shuddered.
"Oh, Doc! how can you be so indelicate as to taunt me with my poverty; to suggest, to hint even so subtly, that I would fill my empty pockets from your purse?" He looked at her reproachfully.
"What _do_ you want, then?"
The Dago Duke"s voice took on a purring, feline softness which was more emphatic and final than any loud-mouthed vehemence--
"What do I want? I want you to tell the officers that you pa.s.sed two men riding on a run from Dubois"s sheep-camp--two Indians or "breeds" in moccasins--and I want you to do it quick!"
"You want me to perjure myself and you "want me to do it quick,"" she mimicked.
He paid no attention.
"I want you to help clear that girl; if you refuse, Giovanni Pellezzo will swear out a warrant for your arrest, charging you with the theft of $5.50 while he was etherized for a minor operation."
They regarded each other in a long silence.
She said finally--
"You know, of course, that this Italian will have to go after this?"
"You"ll have him discharged?"
"Certainly."
"He needs a rest."
"He"ll get it."
Another pause came before she asked--
"Do you imagine for a moment that an ignorant foreigner can get a warrant for me on such a charge?"
"I foresee the difficulty."
"You mean to persist?"
He nodded.
She flung at him--
"Try it!"
"If we fail in this," continued the Dago Duke evenly, "there"s the case of Antonio Amato, whose hand the nurse, acting under your instructions, held after thrusting a pencil in his limp fingers and signed a check when he was dying and unconscious. Which check you cashed after his death, in violation of the State banking laws from which perhaps even you are not exempt if this man"s relatives choose to bring you to account for the irregularity."
"It is a lie!"
"It is not impossible," he continued, "to get the nurse who left you before Nell Beecroft came, saying that she knew enough about you both to "send you over the road." It is not too difficult to bring to light the examples of your incredible incompetency which prove you unfit to sign a death certificate, nor is your record in Nebraska hard to get."
She moistened her colorless lips before she spoke.
"And where is the money coming from to do all this?"
She had touched the weak spot in his attack, but he replied with a.s.surance.
"It will be ready when needed."
"This is persecution--a plot to ruin me on the trumped-up charges of irresponsible people."
The Dago Duke"s keen ear detected the faint note of uncertainty and agitation beneath the defiance of her tone.
"These things are true--and more," he returned unemotionally. "But consider, even if you beat us at every turn through personal influence, you will pay dearly for your victories in money, in peace, in reputation. These things will leave a stigma which will outlast you. It will arouse suspicion of your ability and skill among your private patients who now trust you. You"ll have to fight every inch of the road to retain your ground, or any part of it, against the new and abler physicians who must come with the growth of the country. You"ll not be wanted by your best friends when it comes to a case of life and death.
You"ll become only a kind of licensed midwife rushing about from one accouchement to another, and, even for this, you must finesse and intrigue in the manner which has made the incompetents of your s.e.x in medicine the bete noir of the profession."
The sneering smile she had forced faded as he talked. It was like the deliberate voice of Prophecy, drawing pictures which she had seen in waking nightmares that she called the "blues" and was wont to drive away with a drink or a social call outside.
She raised her chin from her chest where it had sunk, and summoned her courage.
"You have taken a great deal of trouble to inform yourself upon the subject of the medical profession and my unfitness for it."
The Dago Duke hesitated and an expression which was new to it crossed his face, a look of mingled pride and pain.
"I have gone to less trouble than you think," he answered finally. "I was reared in the atmosphere of medicine. My father was a beloved and trusted physician to the royal family of my country. I was to have followed in his footsteps and partially prepared myself to do so. The reason that I have not is not too difficult to guess since it is the same which sends me sheep-herding at $40 a month."
"But my ident.i.ty is neither here nor there." The Dago Duke threw up his hand with a characteristic, foreign gesture as though dismissing himself from the conversation and half regretting even so much of his personal history. "It serves but one purpose and that is that you may know that the degrees which I have earned, not bought, qualify me to speak of your ability, or lack of it, with rather more authority than the average layman"s." He arose languidly and sauntered across the room where he stood looking up at her framed diploma, and added, "To judge, too, of the value of a sheepskin like that. How much did you pay for it, Doc?"
Seeming to expect no reply, he continued serenely, "Well I"ll have to be going. Stake me to a cigarette paper? I haven"t talked so much or been so strongly moved since my remittance was reduced to $100 a month. I can"t get drunk like a gentlemen on that--you couldn"t yourself--and it"s an inhuman outrage. It may drive me to reform--I"ve thought of it.
You"re such a sympathetic listener, Doc. It makes me babble." His hand was on the door-k.n.o.b. "Since you"ve nothing to say I suppose you mean to stick to your story, but you must admit, Doc, I"ve at least been as much of a gentleman as a rattlesnake. I"m rattling before I strike."
The door had closed upon his back when she tore it open.
"Wait a minute!" She was panting as though she had been running a distance. He saw, too, the desperation in her eyes. "Give me--a little--time!"