The Far Country

  “Metallurgy, I think.” He turned to the Czech. “What about tonight, Splinter? Will he wake up?”

  “I think he may, in two or three hours’ time. I shall stay with him all night, myself.”

  Jennifer asked, “Will you want me again?”

  He looked down at her. “Not again tonight,” he said. “I could not have done very much for these men without your help. I find it wonderful that you have never been a nurse.”

  She smiled. “My father’s a doctor,” she said. “Perhaps that makes a difference.”

  “So?” he said. “A doctor in England?”

  “That’s right,” she replied. “He practises in Leicester.”

  “And you have helped him in his practice?”

  She shook her head. “I know a little bit from living in the house, of course. One can’t help learning little bits of things.”

  “You have learned more than little bits of things,” he said. “Now you must be very tired. You should go home and get some sleep.”

  “You’re sure you won’t want me any more?”

  “No,” he said. “Nothing will happen now that will be urgent, till the doctor comes in the morning.”

  She said, “I’d like to know what happens to them.”

  “Sure,” he said. “Perhaps I may come in and tell you, at the homestead.”

  Jack Dorman said, “That’s right. Come in for tea tomorrow or the next day.”

  “If I can, I will do that,” he said. “When the doctor comes, he may wish that I go to Banbury with him, to the hospital, to show what I have done and to hand over the cases in the proper way. I do not know. I will come and tell you tomorrow or the day after.”

  She said simply, “I’ll look forward to you coming.”

  She got into the utility, and Jack Dorman drove her home. Jane and Angela were waiting up for her with a small meal of cold meat and salad and cheese; she was hungry, but before she ate she had to rid herself of her clothes, that stank of sweat and chemicals. She went and stood under the shower, and put on clean pyjamas and a house-coat, and came back to the kitchen and ate a little cold mutton and drank a cup of tea while telling them about it.

  Jack Dorman told Jane, “It was that fellow Zlinter that Ann Pearson told us about, when Peter Loring got his mastoid. He’s quite a surgeon, so it seems.”

  She said, “The one that you met over on the Howqua, who found his own grave?”

  “That’s right. They all call him Splinter up at the camp.”

  Jennifer said sleepily. “Found his own grave?”

  “That’s right,” said Dorman. “Get him to tell you about it. It’s quite a story.”

  She was too tired to go into that at the moment. “He’s very sure of himself,” she said reflectively. “He knew exactly what he wanted to do, right from first to last.”

  Angela asked, “Is he good-looking?”

  “Rather like Boris Karloff,” Jennifer told her. “But he’s got a nice smile.” She paused. “I should think he’s a very good doctor.”

  “He wouldn’t be as good as an English doctor, though, would he?” asked Angela.

  Jennifer smiled at the rose-coloured dream of England. “I don’t know,” she said. “All English doctors aren’t supermen.”

  “I thought the English medical schools were the best in the world,” said Angela. “Every Aussie doctor who wants to do postgraduate work goes to England.”

  “Maybe that’s because they can’t get dollars to go to America,” Jane said dryly.

  Jennifer got up from the table. “I think I’ll go to bed,” she said. “I should think we’d all better go to bed. I’m sorry you’ve had to stay up like this for me.”

  “Makes a bit of a change, a thing like this. We’ve not had so much excitement since the cow calved,” Jane remarked. “Don’t get up tomorrow, Jenny. Sleep in late.”

  “That’s a damn good idea,” said Angela.

  “I didn’t mean you,” said her mother.

  At the lumber camp after the utility had gone, Carl Zlinter sat on the steps of the hut in the cool, velvety night talking to the manager. Jack Dorman had left the remains of his bottle of whisky with them to finish off; the Czech had a second but refused a third. “I should sleep if I drink more,” he told Jim Forrest, “and I must stay awake tonight. Presently this man, he will wake up and I must be with him then.”

  “Look,” said the manager, “is there anything I can do? I’ll stay up with you, if you like.”

  “It is not necessary. There are men sleeping in the hut. If it should be needed, I will send for you. But I think it will not be needed. Everything I think will now be all right.”

  Presently Jim Forrest went back to his house to bed; Carl Zlinter finished his cigarette and went back to the hut. He looked in on his amputation case; the man was still in the same position, apparently asleep; from the door Zlinter could hear the even, regular breathing. He did not go in or make any close examination; better to let him sleep. He went into his trephine case and began cleaning and tidying the room, clearing away the debris of the operation and cleaning and drying his instruments.

  An hour later, at about one in the morning, the man began to come to. He became conscious; once or twice the eyes opened and closed. The colour and the breathing were now much better. Presently the lips moved; the man was trying to say something.

  Carl Zlinter bent beside him. “Don’t talk, Harry,” he said. “Don’t move about. You got a blow upon your head, but you’re right now. Don’t try and talk or move about. Just lie quietly as you are, and rest. You’re right now.”

  He could not make out if the man had understood or not; the lips moved again and he bent to try and hear what he was saying. But now there was a humming in the air, unmelodious but recognisable as a tune. In one of the cubicles of the hut somebody was humming, or chanting to himself in a low tone, “God Save the King”.

  It was impossible for the Czech to hear if his patient was speaking, or if the lips were merely moving by some reflex originating from the damaged brain. He got to his feet in annoyance; the men in the hut were all good types and they knew very well that there were critically ill men in the hut with them. They should know better than to make a row like that in the middle of the night. He went out into the corridor to find out where the noise was coming from and stop it.

  It was coming from the next-door cubicle, that housed his amputation case.

  He opened the door. In the dim, shaded light Bert Hanson was lying on his back awake, maundering through “God Save the King” in low, alcoholic tones, and beating time with one hand. The air was heavy with the aroma of whisky. He took no notice of the doctor, but continued beating time and singing, his eyes half closed, the voice getting stronger and the tune louder with every minute.

  Thy choicess gifs insore

  On him beplea stupore …

  Zlinter went into the room and plucked the towel from the lamp; the room was flooded with light. He saw a lump under the bedclothes, turned them back, and there was the bottle, uncorked and practically empty. He dropped it on the floor with tightened lips, wondering if his patient had drunk the whole of it. From the look of him, he probably had.

  The man said genially in a strong voice, “Good old Splinter. Good old mucking bastard!” He burst into laughter in an access of bonhomie. “Come on, le’s sing ‘God Save the King’ together, and muck the mucking Germans!”

  A man appeared in the corridor dressed in pyjama trousers and no top. “Want any help, Splinter?”

  “This verdamt stupid bloody fool,” said the Czech, angrily, “somebody has given him a bottle of whisky. We must try and keep him quiet, for his own sake and for the man next door.”

  The next two hours were a nightmare. At an early stage Zlinter sent a man to fetch Forrest from his house; by the time he came running the pandemonium was terrific, with three men fighting to keep Bert Hanson in his bed, with Zlinter himself attempting to keep his trephine case quiet and tranquil in the next room
behind a beaver board wall. The man was frantically, fighting drunk; at one stage he got hold of the bottle and used it as a club till it broke, mercifully upon the wall beside him. It was with the greatest difficulty that they got the jagged, broken neck out of his hand.

  Jim Forrest said to Zlinter at the height of it, “You’ll have to give him something. Morphia.”

  The Czech said, “I do not think that will be good. When this is over, there will be reaction, and he will be very weak. I do not think that any drug will work while there is so much alcohol, unless to give it in a great dose as would kill him later.”

  “What the hell are we going to do with him?”

  “Hold him, until the thing passes. If these men grow tired, get other men.”

  “How’s Harry going on?”

  “He is going on ver’ well. It would be better for him if there was less noise.”

  “I’ll do the best I can. But if he can’t have any dope, he’ll have to work it out, and he’s got some way to go.”

  At about three o’clock, and almost suddenly, the man stopped struggling and shouting, and entered on a stage of collapse. Carl Zlinter left his trephine case and gave his whole attention to his amputation drunk. The heart was now very weak. The man lay in a stupor of weakness, gradually sinking. At about four o’clock Zlinter gave an injection of strychnine, which only had a very temporary, slight effect.

  At about half-past five, in the first light of dawn, Bert Hanson died.

  Seven

  IT is the duty of the police to take note of all serious accidents occurring in their district, and Sister Fellowes at the hospital in Banbury had rung up Sergeant Russell the previous evening to tell him there had been an accident at Lamirra, and that the doctor was away at Woods Point on an operation case. The police got to the lumber camp at about half-past seven in the morning, inspired more by a genuine desire to assist than with any thought of invoking the processes of law. It was unfortunate, however, that they got there before Dr. Jennings, who would probably have extended Bert Hanson’s life a little upon paper and signed a death certificate which the police sergeant would have honoured; in a country chronically short of doctors it was no business of the police to go round making trouble.

  As it was, they came upon the scene before the stage was set for them. They found a Czech lumberman utterly exhausted, who had conducted two major operations without any valid medical qualifications whatsoever, and they found one of the patients dead and in a shocking state of death, for there had been little time or energy to clean the body up. The other patient, on whom a major head operation had been performed, was clearly very ill and, in the view of the police sergeant, probably dying too. The whole thing was irregular and possibly criminal. In any case the coroner would have to be informed, and there must be an inquest.

  Dr. Jennings arrived direct from Woods Point half an hour after the police. He found them taking statements from Jim Forrest and Carl Zlinter in the canteen hut, Zlinter having refused point-blank to go to the office of the lumber company, half a mile from his patient. When the doctor came in he got up from the table. “This can wait,” he said to the police sergeant, with small courtesy, for he was very tired. “There are now more important things that must be done.”

  He walked out of the canteen, and took the doctor over to the trephine case at once. Jim Forrest turned to the sergeant. “He’s right, Sarge. He’s got to hand over his case to the doctor. Maybe I can go on telling you what happened.”

  The sergeant thumbed his note-book. “How long have you employed this man?”

  “Aw, look—I couldn’t say for certain. September or October, a year back, I think. Fifteen or sixteen months, maybe.”

  “Has he acted as a doctor before?”

  “Well, what do you think?” said the manager. “If you had a doctor working as a lumberman, you’d use him if a chap got hurt, wouldn’t you? Cuts and sprains and bruises and that? Anything serious gets sent into the hospital. We haven’t had a real accident before this one.”

  The sergeant wrote in his book. “Did you know this man wasn’t registered as a doctor in Victoria?” he asked presently.

  “Sure,” said the manager. “I got him as a labourer through the Immigration Office. If he was a doctor, he’d have been doctoring.”

  “When did you start using him as a doctor?”

  “Aw, look—I forget. He’s been a labourer all along. The men started going to him for cuts and sprains and that—things it wouldn’t be worth going into Banbury for, or getting Dr. Jennings out here. He started coming to me for bandages and stuff, so I made over the first-aid box to him and got a lot more stuff he said we ought to have. It just grew up, you might say.”

  “But he’s been working as a labourer all along?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Did you ever make any enquiry into his medical qualifications?”

  “Only what he told me, Sarge. He said he’d been a doctor in his own country, in Prague or Pilsen or some place like that. And in the German Army. He told me from the first he wasn’t allowed to practise in Australia. I knew that, anyway.”

  “Did you authorise him to do this operation?”

  “Which one?”

  “Well—both. Let’s say the man who died—the amputation—first.”

  “He asked me, and I told him that he’d better go ahead and take the foot off. We couldn’t get a doctor. We couldn’t even get a nurse out from the hospital. Look, Sarge, it was like this …”

  Sergeant Russell said presently, “I don’t want you to think I’m making trouble, Jim. I got to get the facts right for the coroner, because there’ll have to be an inquest. There’s no doctor that can sign a death certificate. I got to get the facts.” He thumbed over his book and sat in silence for a minute or two, reading through his notes. “These operations,” he said. “The one where he took the foot off, and the one on the other fellow’s head. How long did they take?”

  The manager thought for a moment. “Aw, look—I couldn’t say. The foot was pretty quick—twenty minutes, maybe not so long as that. The other one was much longer—two hours, I’d say, or longer than that.”

  The sergeant wrote it down. “Did you help him?”

  “No.”

  Sergeant Russell raised his head and looked the manager in the eyes, sensing prevarication. “Who did help him? He didn’t do operations of that sort all on his own?”

  “There was a girl there,” the manager said. “An English girl staying with Jack Dorman. She was in the utility with him. She gave a hand.”

  “That’s Jack Dorman of Leonora?”

  “That’s right.”

  “What’s her name?”

  “I don’t know. Jack called her Jenny, I think. She was English.”

  “Is she here?”

  “She went back to Leonora last night, with Jack, about midnight. She’s probably there now.”

  “I’ll look in and see her,” the sergeant said, “on my way back.”

  He glanced over his notes. “I’ll have to see this man Zlinter again,” he said. “I’ll have to know the medical degrees he’s got in his own country—that’ll come into it. I think that’s all the questions.”

  “There’s one you haven’t asked, Sarge,” said Jim Forrest, getting up, “and I’d like to know the answer.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Who gave Bert the bloody booze?” the manager said. “I’d like to know the answer to that one.”

  In the hut Dr. Jennings and Carl Zlinter were debating the same point, standing and looking dispassionately at the body of Bert Hanson. “Too bad this had to happen,” said the doctor. “He’s been an alcoholic for some time, I’d say. We’ll probably find an enlarged liver at the post-mortem. Have you any idea how he got the stuff?”

  The Czech shrugged his shoulders. “There were his cobbers all around, all night, here in the corridor,” he said. “I was operating in the next room, and I could not see. It must have been in that time. When
I had finished the trephine I came in to see this one, and I then smelt whisky, and I asked Mr. Forrest, and he said he had been drinking, himself, so I did not think more about it. And afterwards when I came in, I had had a drink of whisky also, so I did not notice.”

  The doctor looked at the broken bottle still lying on the floor. “He probably drank a whole bottle.”

  “I think so, too. We found the lead that is around the cork of a new bottle.”

  “And there’s no saying who gave it to him?”

  “Mr. Forrest asked this morning, but nobody would say. I do not think we shall be able to discover that.”

  “I don’t suppose we shall….” He stood in silence for a minute, and then pulled the sheet over the body. “There’ll have to be an inquest, Zlinter,” he said at last. “It’s a pity I couldn’t have got here before the police. I think I’ll see the coroner before the inquest, and tell him how it all came about.”

  The Czech nodded. “They will be angry because I have done operations, I suppose.”

  “It’s going to have to be explained, and put in the proper light. You don’t have to worry about anything, though you’ll probably have to give evidence.”

  “One does the best one can,” the other said. “It is not possible to do more than that. If I had waited till you could arrive and not done anything, both men would have been dead today. We have now one alive, and we would have the other but for some verdamt fool who gave the whisky.”

  “I’ll go and telephone for the ambulance,” the doctor said. “You’d better come down with me to the hospital and we’ll have a look at what you did to that chap’s head together. Take an X-ray first, perhaps.”

  Jennifer was still in bed when the police car drove up to the homestead at about half-past eight. Jack Dorman was out on his horse in one of the paddocks, but Mario was in the shearing shed, and Jane sent him to fetch her husband. She made Sergeant Russell comfortable with a cup of tea in the kitchen, and went to call Jennifer, who was awake. “Jenny,” she said, “you’ll have to get up, my dear. You’ll be sorry to hear that one of those men died, the one with the amputated foot. The police sergeant’s here, and he wants to ask you a few questions about what happened.”