The Argosy — page 185: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

Edina, 17I “I can’t go,” Max was repeating to himself. ‘I don’t see how I can go. What would become of my practice ?” But his mother was his mother : and Max Brown, a dutiful son, began to feel that he should not like her to die until he had seen her once again. She was not sixty yet. The whole of the rest of the day and part of the night he was revolving matters in his mind; and in the moming he sent an advertisement to the Zimes and to a medical : journal. For more than a week the advertisement brought back no result. Answers there were to it, and subsequent interviews with those who wrote them; but none that were of any avail to Max Brown. Either the applicants did not suit him, or his offer did not suit them. He then inserted the advertisement a second time. And it chanced to fall under the notice of Frank Raynor. Or, strictly speaking, under the notice of his friend Crisp. This was close upon the return of Frank from Eagles’ Nest. Daisy was with her sister in Westbourne Terrace, and Frank had been taken in by Mr. Crisp, a young surgeon who held an appointment at one of the London hospitals. He occupied private rooms, and could accommodate Frank with a sofa-bedstead. Mr. Crisp saw the advertisement on the moming of its second appearance in the Zimes, and pointed it out to Frank. “ Notice. A qualified medical practitioner wanted, to take entire charge for a few months of a general practice in London during the —e absence of the principal.” “It may be worth looking after, old fellow,” said Crisp. ‘Frank seized upon the suggestion eagerly. Most anxious was he to be relieved from his present state of helpless inactivity. An interview took place between him and Max Brown; and before it terminated Frank had accepted the post. To him it looked all couleur de rose. During the very few days he had now been in London, that enemy, the Tiger, had troubled his mind more than was pleasant. That the man had come up in the same train, and absolutely in the compartment immediately behind his own, for the purpose of holding him in view, and of tracking out his place of abode in town, appeared to be only too evident. When Frank had deposited his wife at her sister’s door, the turnings and twistings he caused the cab to make in carrying him to Crisp’s, would have been enough to baffle a detective. Frank hoped it had baffled the Tiger; but he had scarcely liked to show himself abroad since. Therefore the obscurity of the locality in which Mr. Brown's practice lay, while it had frightened away one or two dandies who had inquired about it, was a strong recommendation in the eyes of Frank. The terms proposed by Mr. Brown were these: That Frank Raynor should enter the house as he went out of it, take his place in all respects, carry on the practice for him until he himself retumed, and comicbooks.com |