The Tragedy of the Silver Moon

CHAPTER I.—THE CRAFT OF THE QUACK.-2

“I will examine you,” shouted back the Professor, and then, with the nurse in attendance, she was taken into the electrical room and laid upon the operating-table. The room was plunged into darkness except for the small but powerful light which was focussed, in turn, into each of her ears.

The examination was very brief there, and then the Red Ray was swung over her and through a stethoscope the Professor listened long and intently behind both ears, commanding her to breathe deeply the whole time.

This examination took quite half an hour, but it need not have lasted half a minute, as Starbank had seen all he wanted to with the first glance into her cars. They were nearly blocked up with wax.

“Yes, I can cure you,” he announced confidently as he helped her off the operating-table, “but I shall have to operate. No, no, I shall only use a local anaesthetic and you won’t feel it at all. There will have to be four days’ preparation, too, to render the ears perfectly sterile.”

So the old lady’s ears were plugged with cottonwool soaked with glycerine, and strapped over with adhesive plaster so that the plugs could not be dislodged.

Then on the fifth day, with great solemnity, and in complete darkness except for the inevitable Red Ray, Mrs. Beddoes was given a prick with a needle in both ears. Then a small cut was made, just enough to draw blood, and show stains afterwards upon the towels. Then the blue spark buzzing appliance was switched on fully and in the deafening roar which ensued, the softened wax was quickly syringed from the ears and glycerine plugs immediately re-inserted and bandaged in as before.

“Now, the day after tomorrow,” wrote the Professor upon a leaf of his professional paper, for of course the patient was now stone-deaf with her ears plugged up as they were, “I’ll come to your house at five o’clock and remove the plugs. Of course your hearing will not be perfect, but it will be improved tenfold.”

Two days later the plugs were taken out and the old lady was overjoyed. She said she could now hear much better, certainly as well as two years ago, and she wrote out a cheque for sixty guineas on the spot. Indeed, she was so delighted that Starbank left the house feeling rather glum. He swore angrily at himself that he had not asked double what he had been paid.

Yet a third triumph upon which he always looked back with great pride.

A little boy of eleven years of age, of well-to-do parents in Sussex had suddenly developed epileptic fits and it had been found that unless he was treated with drugs in sufficiently strong doses to make him dull and heavy, the fits kept on recurring.

A Harley Street specialist had been consulted, but apparently the child was never to be free from trouble unless he were unusually heavily drugged. Then the parents heard of Professor Starbank through Sir Pompey Beadle, and, unbeknown to their local doctor and the Harley Street specialist, asked him if he would come down to their place, a few miles out of Dorking, and give his advice as to what should be done for their son.

The Professor found the boy looking well-nourished, and healthy except for the dullness induced by the drugs which were being given him. He realised at once that the parents were shrewd and intelligent and not the type of people to be taken in for a moment, by any parlour conjuring tricks. He had made inquiries about them before he had come down and learnt that the father was an important person in the district and Chairman of the Bench of Magistrates.

So he sat back in his chair, looking very solemn and thoughtful and regarding the boy most intently. He let the father and mother do most of the talking.

He learnt of the doctors to whom the boy had been taken, the various treatments which had been given him and at his, the Professor’s, request, the exact details of the boy’s mode of daily life. Then he considered for a long time before he gave his opinion, wondering what on earth he could suggest in return for the big fee he was intending to charge for coming down. He might well have been puzzled, for as a matter of fact it was the first case of epilepsy he had been called upon to treat.

Yes, certainly he must tell them something very much out of the ordinary! His advice must be very different from that of the Harley Street specialist! He must startle them with something original!

He spoke at last and he spoke very slowly in order that he would drop no aspirates and his grammar be quite correct. He spoke decisively and in his best professional manner.

He told them that the boy was naturally healthy and strong, but that there was some kink in his constitution which would not allow him to live the ordinary life of a lad of his age, in the usual way. But their mistake was they were trying to make him live that ordinary life by filling him up with most powerful drugs in order to enable him to do so. That, however, was all wrong, for the aim must be to give him the life which suited him and which he could follow without recourse to any drugs at all.

So he must have no more drugs and his mode of life must be entirely altered. His whole diet must be changed. He must be taken at once off all dairy foods. He must be deprived of his daily four glasses of milk, his cream, his butter, and his milk puddings. Instead, he must live on fruit juice, margarine on his bread, crushed nuts—almonds preferred—potatoes and haricot beans. No, not an entirely vegetarian diet, for he could have a little beef, but it must be raw and finely scraped.

Now how the boy responded to this treatment can best be told by a conversation which took place in the following year between the mother and the Harley Street specialist when the two met by chance at a garden party.

The specialist inquired after the little boy, and the mother informed him that her son had not had a fit now for nearly fourteen months, the great doctor nodded smilingly.

“Ah, then our treatment proved quite a success!” he exclaimed, looking very pleased.

The mother looked rather embarrassed. “We—ll, no, Doctor,” she replied hesitatingly. “In fact, we took him to someone else and he cured him completely. We consulted a gentleman in Edgware Road. We called in a Dr. Starbank.”

“Starbank!” exclaimed the horrified doctor. “The man who calls himself ‘Professor.’” He spoke angrily. “You shouldn’t have gone to a cheap man like that!”

“Cheap!” ejaculated the mother, with her eyes opened very wide. “Why, he charged us a hundred guineas for coming down, and we’re only thirty miles from town!”

One evening, a few minutes before six, the Professor was alone in his consulting-rooms. The day’s work was over and the nurses had just left, but he was remaining to write some letters. The day had been rather a worrying one, for the police had been in to make some inquiries about a man in Eaton Square who had died from an overdose of morphia, and whom they had found out was a regular patient of his.

Naturally he had denied that he had ever supplied the man with any morphia or, indeed, had ever had any in his own possession, but the nasty-eyed Inspector Tullock had undoubtedly not believed him and had gone on questioning him until he had thought the beast would never stop.

Of course the dead man had got the morphia from him, and as a matter of fact for many months had been paying two guineas for a little phial, the actual cost of winch had been only half a crown. Still, they would never be able to prove anything and he felt quite safe.

But all the same the coming of the police was very annoying, for they had not worried him for a long time and he had been hoping they had crossed him off the list of suspects and forgotten all about him.

The door bell buzzed suddenly and he frowned. He did not like late callers; at the same time, however, he was always keen on the money and it was not his habit to let anything slip.

He opened the door to find an elderly man, carrying a leather handbag, standing upon the doorstep. “Professor Starbank?” queried the man. “Well, I’m very sorry to be calling so late, and if you can’t see me now I’ll make an appointment for another day, but it’ll have to be some time after five, because my work keeps me until then.”

“What do you want to see me about?” asked the Professor, frowning, thinking from the man’s bag that he was only a commercial traveller.

“Pain in the back, lumbago, I think. I get dreadful twinges at times.”

Starbank’s face cleared. Ah, a patient, and lumbago was often profitable! He might be able to put in much more than a bottle of medicine! It might mean battery and the all-curing Red Ray! He might get a fiver out of him! The man wasn’t poor! His clothes were of good quality.

He smiled with an assumption of great kindliness. “Well, come in, I’ll see you at once. I never turn anyone away who’s in pain.”

So the man entered and Starbank very quickly gave it as his opinion that the trouble was lumbago and must be treated at once if the risk of being laid up for many months was to be avoided.

The arrangement was made for a five-guinea cure, for which the patient was to have six treatments with the electric battery, with the first one being given straight away. The Professor was always of opinion that there was nothing like starting at once upon a treatment and getting a good deposit, cash down.

So the patient was taken into the electrical room, and with his coat and waistcoat removed and his shirt and vest pulled high up, was laid upon his side on the operating table. He indicated where he had been having pain and, the current of the battery being turned on, the electrode was moistened and pressed against the affected spot.

Then instantly a most unexpected thing happened. The patient gave a low moaning cry and rolled over upon his back, with his body sagging down in a horrible limpness. He closed his eyes and his jaw dropped.

“It won’t have hurt you,” called out the Professor anxiously, alarmed at the man’s appearance. “You’re quite all right.”

But the patient was not quite all right. On the contrary, his heart had stopped beating and he had ceased to breathe.

“Good God!” ejaculated the Professor, “he must have had a crock heart and the shock was too much for him!”

Then followed dreadful minutes for Starbank. He tried in every way possible to resuscitate the patient, but all to no purpose and at last he had to realise the man was dead.

With hands which trembled, he took some brandy from a cupboard and gave himself a stiff drink. Then, subsiding into a chair, he wiped over his forehead with a handkerchief and considered what he must do.

It was damnedly awkward. There was no doubt about that. He had done nothing wrong and it was not his fault, but it would do his practice a lot of harm. It would mean the cursed police coming in again and they would make as much fuss about it as they could, to spite him.

Then there would be the coroner’s inquest and it would be broadcast everywhere that he had had no training as a doctor and that his diplomas were quite worthless! It might even come out that he had once been an attendant at the Zoo. That brute, Inspector Tullock, had found it out somehow, for he had pretended to recognise him as the keeper in charge of the hyenas fifteen years ago.