Page:Chipperfield--Unseen Hands.djvu/238

226 "I like it. You'd think I would have had enough of surgery and braces and nostrums since I've been the happy hunting-ground for so many futile experiments, but ever since I was a kid I've wanted to be a doctor," Rannie explained; adding with a bitter curl of his thin lips: "Fine ambition, isn't it, for a fellow with a back like a dromedary! It would be a case of 'Physician, heal thyself,' and I wouldn't have a comeback!"

"You might make a big success of it if you went in seriously for the study of medicine," Odell remarked, rising and sauntering over to the bookcase which held the little volume he had examined a few hours previously. "Your accident has not impaired the keenness of your brain nor the strength of your hands. One of the greatest physicians I know is under a far worse handicap; he is blind. … Mind if I have a look at one or two of these? There is something that has puzzled me—Ah, I think this will give me what I want."

He took the little volume from its place, and Rannie rose and crossed to his side.

"Oh, that," he said indifferently. "I think I know what you are driving at, Sergeant; and that won't help you. If the cause of my mother's last illness puzzled you, it puzzled Adams and the specialists a lot more, although they looked wise and called it blood-poisoning."

"Still, here is a chapter on septicemia"—Odell opened the book and carefully placed his own thumb over the telltale imprint on the margin.

"Merely superficial; and it has no business, properly speaking, in a treatise on diseases of the blood." Rannie clawed over the heap of books stacked upon the floor, and