Doctor Death Read Online Free PDF Page B

Belgians lurched into the other with such force that they both began to slide down the embankment. The wagon hit one of the trees of the promenade with a splintering crash, keeled over onto one side, and was dragged for almost fifty meters by the panicked horses. By then, both my father and the Commissioner had long since been thrown from their seats. The Commissioner rolled down the embankment’s grassy slope and miraculously escaped with minor bruises. Papa was less fortunate. He was briefly caught—fortunately not under the carriage’s heavy lead-lined body but under the box’s somewhat lighter wooden construction. When he attempted to sit up, he noted that both the radius and ulna in his left arm were broken, and a fracture of the tibia was quickly confirmed as well. In other words, he had broken both an arm and a leg.
    The coachman had the worst of it. He survived, but one of the Belgian’s enormous iron-shod hooves had connected so violently with his head that he never regained the power of speech. Only one word occasionally escaped his lips, randomly and without any connection to what was being said and done around him.
    That one word was “devil.”

    Papa flatly refused to be hospitalized at Saint Bernardine’s. He ordered two of the ambulance drivers to see the injured coachman off to the hospital with great speed, then directed the third to set and splint his own fractures, after which he allowed himself to be transported back to Carmelite Street in an ordinary carriage.
    His face was drawn and pale. I am deliberately avoiding the term “pale as a corpse” because there is a difference, but worryingly pale, all the same, and glistening with the perspiration brought on by severe pain. The hansom cab driver literally had to carry him up the stairs to the salon. Fortunately, the driver Papa had hired was quite a big man.
    “What happened?” I asked, between clenched teeth.
    My father did not answer. He was busy groaning. The coachman had to explain about “the accident with the carriage,” and it was not until later when the Commissioner came to check on the patient that I got the whole story.
    “The beast must have been crazed,” he said of the dog that had attacked them. “It must have been rabid. Healthy dogs do not behave that way.”
    “Did they catch it?” asked my father. “Has it been put down? Can we examine it?”
    “No,” said the Commissioner. “It disappeared. We have three riflemen patrolling the area, and we have distributed leaflets. But so far no one has seen it.”
    “Get ahold of Pasteur’s vaccine,” said my father. “Make sure you get plenty. It is a cruel disease.”
    The Commissioner nodded. “We have sent word to the Institute in Paris,” he said. He sat on the edge of the plush-covered mahogany armchair that he preferred. He had not relinquished his hat but sat turning it in his hands, seemingly undecided whether to stay or go.
    “May we offer you some refreshment?” I asked, because I wanted him to stay. It was easier to extract details from him than from my father. “Cognac? Coffee? A glass of wine?” I knew better than to offer him tea.
    “I probably should be getting on . . . ,” he said.
    “Presumably the search for the dog is not within your jurisdiction?” I asked.
    “No, but the . . .” He interrupted himself. “No, I have to go. I will come back later.”
    “What is it?” asked my father, who like me had noted the Commissioner’s unease. “Is it the coachman? Is he dead?”
    “No,” said the Commissioner. “They say he will probably live.”
    “What, then?”
    The Commissioner got up abruptly. “I have no wish to tire you,” he said.
    “And you do not. You are, however, making me very impatient, and that is not good for my health. What has happened?”
    The Commissioner shook his head. “It is Father Abigore. Or rather his earthly remains. They have disappeared.”
    “Disappeared?”
    “Yes. Someone used the confusion after