It was certain that he criticised everything the doctors in the case had done and bluntly told them his small opinion of them when they arrived in haste to meet him. But they knew Raddiker and his unpleasant manners and accepted his diatribes in silence. One of the local physicians afterward told Tom that he considered a man with as keen a mind as the foreign doctor had the right to be as ungentlemanly as he pleased. “Not a bit!” cried the young inventor. “The greatest man in the world could not be excused for using such language or displaying such a mean spirit.” However, in the matter of Mr. Nestor’s illness, the famous Dr. Raddiker did his work well, being pressed to it by the circumstances. Had it not been for Tom Swift he would have gone away disgruntled from Shopton and refused to see the invalid. But, as was the nature of the strange man, having once questioned the other physicians and gained a full history of the case, he became interested. And once he was interested in a puzzling problem, Dr. Raddiker hung on to it like a bulldog to a bone! He would not allow them to remove his automobile from before the door, and it remained in readiness for departure. He was in just as much haste as ever to leave the despised Shopton. But he stayed beside Mr. Nestor’s bed for twelve hours, watching him, studying the fluctuating symptoms of the disease, and finally late that night was ready to give his diagnosis. Having scolded the other doctors and having declared that no medicine could aid the patient, Dr. Raddiker left to continue his “vacation” after making a most strange pronouncement regarding the case. When Tom Swift heard of it the next day he was inclined to believe that the savant was quite as mad as he appeared to be. “What’s that?” he cried. “You don’t mean he said _that_, Mary? That your father must go to the Arctic? The man is mad! Maybe he expects him to join some party in search of the Pole? Don’t tell me that fellow is a scientist! He has escaped from a madhouse!” But the physician had been serious. A change of climate was all that would save Mr. Nestor. And a change to a very cold climate was the change that would be most efficacious. The local doctors were quite serious about it. The disease from which Mr. Nestor suffered, when once named by Raddiker, was recognized as a rare but well understood trouble. A few weeks in a climate of keen frost might entirely eradicate the germs of the disease that had stricken Mary’s father. The treatment had been pointed out. To say “change of climate” was all very well. But as Mary confessed to Tom, the way for such a change seemed closed. Who was to go with Mr. Nestor on any such journey? He could not go alone. Mrs. Nestor was in such health herself that the physicians would not recommend such a journey for her. In fact, they forbade thought of it. Mary could not leave her mother.