“Well, here it is,” said he. “I’m figuring to marry. Maybe you guessed it.”
Horace stared blackly at him. “Not—not …”
“That’s it. The Latham wren.”
“By God, you shan’t!”
“By God, I shall!” retorted the canaller with perfect good humor. “What’s to stop me?”
“Her father. He’d strangle you first.”
“Who’s to tell him? Not you, I guess. Not on that oath of yours.”
Horace groaned. “For a fip I’d put poison in your dosage.”
“Too bad you can’t allow yourself that pleasure,” sympathized the other. “Just cure me up and keep your mouth shut till merry ring the marriage chimes. You aren’t sweet on her, yourself, are you, my bucko?”
“That’s no affair of yours.”
“You well might be. Ripe fruit. I don’t know that I’d go so far as the altar,” he added carelessly, “except for the rhino. To be quite open, I need it.”
“Do you flatter yourself that you’ll ever touch a penny of Genter Latham’s money?”
“Yes, yes, my boy,” was the genial response. “He’s dotened on the little flibbertigibbet. And you don’t know my powers of persuasion. I’ve got a special use for the ready, and soon.”
“Have you?”
“There’s a sweet little freighter on the market. Owner dying of a consumption. Cost a round thousand, and can be taken, horses and all, for a cool eight-fifty. But where would I find eight-fifty, outside the honorable estate of matrimony?”
Horace rose. “Well, I’m not going to throw you out, much as I’d like to.” Rounding the table, he stood above his patient. “Open your mouth. Wider.”
He set a hand on either side of the jaunty head, tilting it for the advantage of the light. His left hand, pressed lightly against the side of the skull, communicated a message of something peculiar, something lacking. His arm was struck smartly up. Silverhorn was out of the seat, his mouth drawn in a snarl, his eyes feral.
“What do you think you’re doing?”
Horace returned to his place. “Take your seat,” said he quietly.
The caller obeyed, but his every muscle was tense.
“Any trouble with your hearing?” Horace made the tone as casual and professional as he could. He knew that he had a hair-trigger situation to deal with.
“No. Why should there be?”
“You never can tell with this kind of thing.”
The patient growled something beneath his breath, but it seemed to the observant physician that there was a sensible relaxation. Drawing to him one of his bottles which contained a transparent liquid, he toyed with it for a moment.
“You’re something of an expert,” he said presently. “You know what aqua regia is, I assume.”
The canal man grinned evilly. “You’d like to give me some, wouldn’t you? How would you rid yourself of the body?”
“Oh, no, no!” said Horace mildly. “I’m merely mentioning it as illustration.” He lifted the vial, weighed it in his cupped hand. “Hydrochloric and nitric acid,” he remarked. “A potent mixture.”
“What of it?”
“You have something like it in your system,” said Horace with deliberation. “If it is neglected or exasperated by indulgence, it could burn through you as this compound could burn into the bone, eat out your eyes, dissolve the very gold out of your teeth.”
“Rawbones and bloody head!” sneered Silverhorn. “Trying to scare me, Doc?”
“Who cropped your ear?”
Silverhorn’s hand jumped to his waist. His face was gray with fury. “Why, God damn you!” he snarled.
“Don’t draw that knife.”
“I’m going to cut your bloody heart out.”
Horace poised the bottle. “I can’t miss your face from here,” he warned.
Silverhorn, half out of his chair, quivered like a snake’s head.
“Sit back,” advised Horace. “You might kill me before the acid worked. And you might come out alive. But you wouldn’t have any face left to speak of. No eyes, certainly. Don’t you think you’d get the worst of it?”
The other made a mighty effort. “You’re a cool one,” he muttered.
“Let’s both keep cool. Talk it over like sensible men. Where did you study your medicine?”
“New York. College of Physicians & Surgeons.” But there had been a moment’s hesitancy.
“Sure it wasn’t the University of Pennsylvania Medical?”
“What if it was?”
“Ever deal in cadavers?”
Silverhorn twitched. The sound in his throat was hardly a response.
“Three years ago several Penn medics were surprised body-snatching. A mob caught two of them and operated on their ears before they got away and disappeared. I could find out their names.”
“Find out and be damned! I got my ear chewed off in a rough-and-tumble.”
“Not that ear. I could feel the clean cut.”
Silverhorn breathed hard. “What are you after? Hush money?”
Horace ignored that. “Mr. Latham will be advised to put a guard on his daughter until your record can be investigated.”
“Why, you false invoice! I’m your patient. This is on your confidential oath, God blast your soul!”
Horace allowed himself a thin smile. “You have not consulted me about your ear. That is not a medical but a police matter.”
There was an interval of silence. Then Silverhorn said, “So you want me to bow off the girl.”
“I do.”
The handsome face became a leering mask. “Suppose it’s too late?”
“I’ll know that, too. I am her physician.”
Another side of the incalculable blackguard showed itself. “Well, it isn’t,” said he. “Not but what I might have, I warrant. But I played a different game this time. I’m half-dozened on the little witch, to tell truth,” he added ruefully.
Horace wanted nothing now so much as to be rid of him. “I’ll send your medicaments to the boat. Keep your undertaking and I’ll keep mine. Remember, if there’s any attempt on your part to see the girl, I go to Mr. Latham and the prosecuting authorities. Act like a decent man, and I’ll keep quiet.”
The canal man said sorrowfully, “Silverhorn Ramsey, slacking his towline for a puny punk like you. By the loins of Levi! It isn’t reasonable.”
“Report back here in a week’s time. Take the medicine as directed. Good day to you, Captain Ramsey.”
“Good day to you, Dr. Punk.”
He retrieved his bugle and swaggered forth.
Horace dropped back in his chair, sweating freely with relief. That he had been very near to death, he had no doubt. His throat was dry. He uncorked the transparent vial and let the contents trickle down his throat to the last grateful drop. As he set it back, he heard a gasp. Silverhorn Ramsey stood in the open doorway, with protruding eyes.
“Jesus!” he whispered.
Horace grinned at him. He knew that there was no longer anything to fear, once his rage had subsided.
“Distilled water for microscopic use,” he explained.
“Nicked!” said Silverhorn lamentably.
“What brings you back?”
“Your fee. I forgot it.”
“I, also. Sixty-five cents, medicines included.”
“Lawful money,” said the patient, laying down the sum.
“Thank you. Mind my advice. No liquor. No women.”
“What a life!” said Silverhorn Ramsey.
– 19 –
My Uncle Horace says “What’s a nose for?” and Ma says “To keep out of Other Folks’ business.”
(DINTY’S DIARY)
Natural seepage, it became only too evident, would not suffice to maintain a dependable depth in the new channel, even for the strictly localized traffic. Some of the small hill streams were now diverted. Together, the several sources brought the level to a point where shallow craft would float.
No engineer had consi
dered the possible effects of pressure in the vicinity of the banks. Quicksands developed, resulting in leakage which ruined some adjacent farmlands. Squire Jerrold, whose project comprised the most porous part of the terrain, was plagued with threats of lawsuits. Within the village limits, breaks and faults in the geological structure caused cellars to fill and noisome pools to gather in depressions. The resourceful anopheles mosquito availed herself of these golden opportunities for egg-laying. Horace found a number of specimens, displaying their gauche and familiar attitude against inner walls. Having once suffered the discredit of the mistaken prophet, he was chary of playing Cassandra a second time. He waited.
Results were not long in showing themselves. On the third Sunday of a humid July spell, Dominie Strang, after preaching for less than two hours and with much still to expound, toppled across the pulpit in collapse. It might have been a signal, so prompt was the response from his flock. A dozen of them were down that evening. Other congregations fared no better. Within a fortnight, ten percent of the populace were alternately burning and shivering. It was an epidemic.
“Every house its own earthquake,” quoth Carlisle Sneed between chattering teeth.
Palmyra had lived through onsets before and expected to survive this one. Happily it was a disabling, rather than a virulent type. But a new factor was present, an economic threat more disconcerting than any physical woes. The place was getting a bad name. The evil word, “unhealthy,” was attaching to it. Wiseacres from the regions around surmised that the pestilent miasmas of the Montezuma Marshes had blown westward on prevalent winds and settled down Upon the valley. While the affliction was at its height, flies reinforced the mosquitoes and contributed their quota of befoulment with the result of adding the gripes to the shakes. Palmyra was an unhappy town.
In this, its hour of travail, Rochester (now, in its expansion, having discarded the belittling “ville”), allegedly envious of its neighbor’s prosperity, dealt it a foul blow. The Rochester Telegraph published a headline, “Palmyra Plague.” The local organ came back with a red-hot editorial, stigmatizing Rochester as “a nest of scandal and an emporium of mud, disorder and outcasts.” Palmyra it roundly declared to be “the fairest, the most enlightened, the most prosperous, the healthiest and lawfullest community between Hudson River and Lake Erie, and this statement we challenge malice successfully to confute.”
Once hatched, the malignant phrase gained currency with the traveling public. Coach passengers manifested a tendency to avoid the local inns and bed down farther along the line. Custom at the Eagle fell off by a round quarter. New money ceased to flow into the village. Several projected businesses, including a chandlery and a storehouse, delayed construction. Worst of all, the danger loomed that the canal authorities might abandon their announced plan, upon which the village was capitalizing, to establish a local pay-office with all the consequent influx of ready money, and to make the two basins, soon to be enlarged to three, the chief loading port for the whole locality. And now possibly to lose this! With the warehouses already bursting their walls with waiting produce! What a blow to local pride and prosperity!
Attack of an unforeseen nature followed. Broadsides appeared in the various camps, cunningly worded to play upon the reputation of the valley for unhealthfulness. Work could be had under better and safer conditions in the Montezuma region. No fevers. No ague. Good wages. Good fare. Liberal liquor allowances. Generous prize offers. Work for one and all. Another bid issued from the vicinity of Lock Port where work was under way on the Western Section.
“Dig, Dry-shod and in Comfort,” invited the contractors. “Why Risk your Health among the Miasmas?”
Squire Jerrold’s men deserted, almost in a body. Genter Latham lost two sub-foremen and many of his best diggers. Not an employer in the stretch but suffered from the specious representations. The village trustees appealed to the Canal Commission. How was the work to be completed if these pirates were allowed to lure essential labor away with false promises? The Commission did nothing.
“Treason!” editorialized the Canal Advocate which had conscientiously rejected the proffered advertisements. “What kind of patriotism is thus displayed? These miscreants care nothing for our State’s most glorious enterprise.”
At a meeting of contractors and sub-contractors, the question of an increased wage-scale was mooted. Genter Latham, the largest employer, vehemently opposed it.
“No digger is worth more than four shillings a day and damned few of ’em that much,” was his dictum.
Nevertheless Squire Jerrold sent out a call for one hundred and fifty men at sixty cents a day, almost precipitating an open quarrel with Genter Latham. Lock Port raised its bid to seventy-five cents, and was followed by a like raise in the Montezuma area. Palmyra was threatened with paralysis. About this time, Editor-Pastor Strang, sorely afflicted in his bowels and with recurrent shakes to boot, retired from journalism, turning over his plant to a pair of energetic young men, Messrs. Grandin and Tucker, who immediately initiated a save-Palmyra campaign and set about organizing the citizenry.
Carlisle Sneed had been heard to say of Genter Latham that “no moskeeter with a fipsworth of sense in his noodle would risk breaking his beak on the old sharkskin.” Nevertheless the great man looked yellow and seamed as he lumbered into Dr. Amlie’s office. Horace reached for his thermometer, but the visitor waved him back.
“I ain’t sick.”
“You don’t look well.”
“You’re nothing to brag of, yourself,” retorted the other with a weak grin.
“I don’t get much rest, these nights,” admitted Horace, whose practice had increased beyond normal endurance.
“We’re calling a town meeting tomorrow evening,” said Mr. Latham.
“About time, too.”
“That’s as may be. Will you come with your microscope?”
“If the Board invites me.”
“They’ll invite you. And they’ll listen to you this time.”
“They’d better,” gritted the medico. “I’ll give them something to bite on.”
The gathering, with the village trustees on the platform, had more than a touch of the grotesque. Nothing short of impending catastrophe could have dragged so many of the leading figures from their beds of pain and uncertainty. Chairman Levering, blinking out upon a sea of pallid faces, poised a tremulous gavel and, with a chittering jaw, proceeded to “c-c-call this m-m-m-m-m-meeting to orrrderrrrr.” Simultaneously two trustees raced for the door with identical expressions of anguish and foreboding. Dr. Murchison in a front-row chair, bent over a stout cane, his skin of that unsightly hue termed “puke” except in the daintier prints which refined it to “puce.” The old man, with a temperature which Horace Amlie expertly guessed to be at least 102, was game.
Horace, himself, was gaunt as a ferret from sleeplessness and overwork. Several times during the proceedings he was called upon to escort tremulous gentlemen to their distant goal. Palmyra’s claim to be the healthiest settlement along the canal was not being well supported.
After a general discussion focusing on the dastardly threat to the town’s growth and prosperity, Mr. Genter Latham (temperature 101½) moved that Dr. Horace Amlie be invited to express his ideas. The motion was seconded by Trustee Van Wie (twelve pounds underweight). Horace, who had fallen asleep on his bench from exhaustion, hauled himself to his feet and surveyed the assemblage with sore and uncompromising eyes.
“Well,” said he, “how do you like it?”
A mutter of discontent answered him.
“You don’t like it. Neither do I. You’re getting just what you asked for.”
Up rose the Honest Lawyer, shivering like a leaf. “Are you presuming to lay upon us the blame for a visitation of Heaven?” he challenged.
“It’s a judgment of Heaven, I agree,” said Horace. “But for what?”
“Our sins.” said Deacon Dillard piously.
“Just so. Filth is a sin. And sickness is the judgment.”
> The Rev. Theron Strang, apologizing for a preliminary fit of active nausea, felt impelled to dissent mildly from this heterodoxy. Filth and flies were of Beelzebub, he admitted, but there was no Scriptural warrant for attributing disease to them, as his young friend implied. Dr. Murchison, for the medical faculty, concurred with the parson. Tenderly rubbing his distended abdomen, he repeated the time-honored theory of miasmatic poisoning. Horace stepped to the platform.
“Those of you who are queasy or incontinent had better leave,” he warned. “I’m going to make you sick at your stomachs.”
“Not me,” announced Carlisle Sneed. “I got no stomach left to be sick at. I’m quitting.” He tottered out followed by several other sufferers.
Horace extracted a covered fruit jar from his tail pockets and set it down on the table with a bang. It was half full of dark blobs, some of which appeared to be in a state of fermentation.
“Flies,” he said. “Collected from local premises. Would anyone like to smell them?”
Mr. Van Wie volunteered, and was obliging enough to gag violently.
“Anyone else? Dr. Murchison? Mr. Upcraft?”
The Honest Lawyer shook his head. “What if they do stink?” said he contentiously. “So does a skunk. But a skunk’s juice is healthy. It’s good for a rheumy cold. Ain’t that correct, Dr. Murchison?”
“A skunk,” said Horace, “is a cleanly and respectable creature beside a fly. So is the dirtiest hog that ever wallowed in a swill-pile, or the foulest crow that ever scavenged in carrion. I’m going to tell you something about the flies that light on the food you eat.”
With simple directness that brought out every point of disgust and nausea, he gave a five-minute character sketch of the local muscae, their breeding and feeding habits, their capacities as freighters of filth, and the human ailments which, in the opinion of enlightened science, they bore with them wherever they alighted. He then passed to the hardly more appetizing mosquito. When he sat down the hue of the faces below him was greener by several degrees. Maltster Vandowzer swallowed a brace of pills from the palm of his hand and broke the uncomfortable silence.
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