Max Brand

Dr. Kildare’s Hardest Case

Warsaw 2020

Contents

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 1

REAR ADMIRAL Lindley Parker Sessions, commandant of the Yard, stood with his hand on his hips and looked up. There is a saying that even the Devil would make a sailor if he could only learn to look up. However, the Rear Admiral was not staring at the leech of a sail; he was watching the ironworkers as they ran up a new portion of the ways. Welders did most of the construction in the Yard, but for lack of them at this point, Lieutenant Commander Henry Jervis, who supplied the engineering brains for the Rear Admiral, was using a riveting gang.

It was characteristic of Jervis that instead of remaining in an office with blueprints he was out in the Yard in the weather. There was a special brand of weather to-day. The wind blew enough to slant the rain into long, dim pencillings, thickening to sleet in the air and freezing on the ground. Through the dark of the day the steel shone faintly, slippery with ice, more dangerous to the workers than Japanese bombs or German bullets. Even the Devil, of whom the Rear Admiral was thinking, would not have kept men at work on such a day; but Commander Jervis was in many respects more formidable.

In his brain there were printed in red letters such words as “Scheduled for completion,” and “Due for delivery,” always with a date. The only alteration in those dates, so long as Jervis was in charge of the Yard, was to move them forward, not back. He was always clipping a few strokes from par, as it were, and since the chief credit must go to the officer in command, the reputation of the Rear Admiral in Washington was sweeter than bird song. In his heart of hearts he despised his high repute as a builder; he yearned upward and outward toward the winds and the battle-grey seas of the Pacific and the Atlantic; so that his admiration of Jervis, the brilliant engineer, was slightly poisoned by regret.

He presently was aware of another spectator who stared upward toward the riveting gang and Jervis. It was a burly sergeant of marines.

“You look more like a sailor than a marine,” said the Admiral. “Why is that?”

The sergeant remembered to salute. “Because I’ve had my nose broke a couple of times, sir,” he said, “and my jaw once.”

Upon the thickness of the man’s neck and the iron of his jaw the Admiral looked with pleasure, which suddenly was disturbed by the realization that certain implications were underlying the last words of the sergeant. The Admiral mustered his quarterdeck scowl. “What’s your name?” he asked.

“Sergeant Weyman, sir,” said the marine.

“Why are you loitering around here?”

“To get the commander’s eye, sir.”

“And then what?”

“To tell him to get out of the wet.”

“You’ll tell him, eh? I’ve told him the same thing twenty times, but he won’t do it.”

“He’ll mind what I tell him,” said the sergeant. “He knows I been working in a hospital–years I been there, sir.”

The Admiral considered afresh that face made for battle but now filled with almost feminine concern.

“Jervis is overworked,” said the Admiral.

“He’s as thin as a rail and as white as a bone,” agreed Sergeant Weyman, “but there’s no sense in him to–”

The riveting gun broke out in a roar above them. Commander Jervis had taken the dolly-bar from the backer-up and was demonstrating how it should be used. Now he stepped back, handed the bar to the ironworker, and moved aside.

“Watch yourself–watch!” yelled Sergeant Weyman.

The Admiral saw Henry Jervis, twenty feet above him, topple outward like a bowling pin which has been jostled off balance but is reluctant to fall. The lieutenant commander made a swimming motion with one hand, a grabbing gesture with the other. The riveter reached for him but pulled back his hand as though he saw clearly that Jervis was gone. Then the hesitant body made up its mind and plunged down.

Admiral Sessions had one great pang of sorrow for his young friend, followed by a swift sense of being released once more toward the high seas, like a bird into its natural element. Then he saw that Weyman, yelling loudly, had run into the path of the fall and actually was trying to receive Jervis in his outstretched arms. Both of them fell. Weyman bounced up again as from springs; Jervis lay on his back with a stroke of blood across his face.

Phrases formed in the mind of the Admiral as he hurried to the spot; “in line of duty”..."inspiring leader”..."all who serve are fighting on a battlefield...”

He was kneeling by Jervis, now.

“Keep your hands off of him,” directed the sergeant harshly. He pressed his ear above Jervis’s heart and presently smiled a little.

“He’s going to live, sergeant, eh?” asked the Admiral humbly.

“You’re damn right,” said Sergeant Weyman.

A siren screeched in their ears; then they were shifting Jervis on to the stretcher with Weyman taking charge. The sergeant took his place behind the wheel of the ambulance.

“Come out of that!” protested the driver.

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