Lord God Made Them All Read Online Free PDF

the car with my brain spelling out the concise case history which Humphrey had given me. Small bitch nursing five puppies, signs of anxiety and stiff gait this afternoon, and now prostrate and trembling. Classical puerperal eclampsia. Rapidly fatal without treatment. And it was nearly an hour and a half since he had phoned. I couldn’t bear to think about it.
    Humphrey was still up. He had obviously been consoling himself with the bottle because he could barely stand.
    “You’ve come, Jim, lad,” he mumbled, blinking at me.
    “Yes, how is she?”
    “Just t’same …”
    Clutching my calcium and my intravenous syringe, I rushed past him into the kitchen.
    Myrtle’s sleek body was extended in a tetanic spasm. She was gasping for breath, quivering violently, and bubbles of saliva dripped from her mouth. Those eyes had lost their softness and were fixed in a frantic stare. She looked terrible, but she was alive … she was alive.
    I lifted the squealing pups onto a rug nearby and quickly clipped and swabbed the area over the radial vein. I inserted the needle into the blood vessel and began to depress the plunger with infinite care and very slowly. Calcium was the cure for this condition but a quick blast would surely kill the patient.
    I took several minutes to empty the syringe, then sat back on my heels and watched. Some of these cases needed narcotics as well as calcium, and I had nembutal and morphine ready to hand. But as the time passed, Myrtle’s breathing slowed down and the rigid muscles began to relax. When she started to swallow her saliva and look round at me, I knew she would live.
    I was waiting for the last tremors to disappear from her limbs when I felt a tap on my shoulder. Humphrey was standing there with the whisky bottle in his hand.
    “You’ll ’ave one, won’t you, Jim?”
    I didn’t need much persuading. The knowledge that I had almost been responsible for Myrtle’s death had thrown me into a mild degree of shock.
    My hand was still shaking as I raised the glass, and I had barely taken the first sip when the little animal got up from the basket and walked over to inspect her pups. Some eclampsias were slow to respond but others were spectacularly quick, and I was grateful for the sake of my nervous system that this was one of the quick ones.
    In fact the recovery was almost uncanny because, after sniffing her family over, Myrtle walked across the table to greet me. Her eyes brimmed with friendliness and her tail waved high in the true beagle fashion.
    I was stroking her ears when Humphrey broke into a throaty giggle. “You know, Jim, I’ve learned summat tonight.” His voice was a slow drawl but he was still in possession of his wits.
    “What’s that, Humphrey?”
    “I’ve learned … hee-hee-hee … I’ve learned what a silly feller I’ve been all these months.”
    “How do you mean?”
    He raised a forefinger and wagged it sagely. “Well, you’ve allus been tellin’ me that I got you out of your bed for nothin’ and I was imaginin’ things when I thought me dog was ill.”
    “Yes,” I said. “That’s right.”
    “And I never believed you, did I? I wouldn’t be told. Well, now I know you were right all the time. I’ve been nobbut a fool, and I’m right sorry for botherin’ you all those nights.”
    “Oh, I shouldn’t worry about that, Humphrey.”
    “Aye, but it’s not right.” He waved a hand towards his bright-faced, tail-wagging little dog. “Just look at her. Anybody can see there was never anythin’ wrong with Myrtle tonight.”

Chapter
3
    T HE HIGH MOORLAND ROAD was unfenced, and my car wheels ran easily from the strip of tarmac onto the turf, cropped to a velvet closeness by the sheep. I stopped the engine, got out and looked around me.
    The road cut cleanly through the grass and heather before dipping into the valley beyond. This was one of the good places where I could see into two dales, the one I had left and the one in front. The whole land was