Kwaque's increasing restlessness at night, due to the swelling under his
right arm-pit, had began to wake Daughtry up. After several such
experiences, he had investigated and decided that Kwaque was sufficiently
sick to require a doctor. For which reason, one morning at eleven,
taking Kwaque along, he called at Walter Merritt Emory's office and
waited his turn in the crowded reception-room.
"I think he's got cancer, Doc.," Daughtry said, while Kwaque was pulling
off his shirt and undershirt. "He never squealed, you know, never
peeped. That's the way of niggers. I didn't find our till he got to
wakin' me up nights with his tossin' about an' groanin' in his
sleep.--There! What'd you call it? Cancer or tumour--no two ways about
it, eh?"
But the quick eye of Walter Merritt Emory had not missed, in passing, the
twisted fingers of Kwaque's left hand. Not only was his eye quick, but
it was a "leper eye." A volunteer surgeon in the first days out in the
Philippines, he had made a particular study of leprosy, and had observed
so many lepers that infallibly, except in the incipient beginnings of the
disease, he could pick out a leper at a glance. From the twisted
fingers, which was the anaesthetic form, produced by
nerve-disintegration, to the corrugated lion forehead (again anaesthetic),
his eyes flashed to the swelling under the right arm-pit and his brain
diagnosed it as the tubercular form.
Just as swiftly flashed through his brain two thoughts: the first, the
axiom, _whenever and wherever you find a leper, look for the other
leper_; the second, the desired Irish terrier, who was owned by Daughtry,
with whom Kwaque had been long associated. And here all swiftness of eye-
flashing ceased on the part of Walter Merritt Emory. He did not know how
much, if anything, the steward knew about leprosy, and he did not care to
arouse any suspicions. Casually drawing his watch to see the time, he
turned and addressed Daughtry.
"I should say his blood is out of order. He's run down. He's not used
to the recent life he's been living, nor to the food. To make certain, I
shall examine for cancer and tumour, although there's little chance of
anything like that."
And as he talked, with just a waver for a moment, his gaze lifted above
Daughtry's eyes to the area of forehead just above and between the eyes.
It was sufficient. His "leper-eye" had seen the "lion" mark of the
leper.
"You're run down yourself," he continued smoothly. "You're not up to
snuff, I'll wager. Eh?"
"Can't say that I am," Daughtry agreed. "I guess I got to get back to
the sea an' the tropics and warm the rheumatics outa me."
"Where?" queried Doctor Emory, almost absently, so well did he feign it,
as if apparently on the verge of returning to a closer examination, of
Kwaque's swelling.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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