Stephen returned to the bar. Harvey had started to feel a little sick, but was loath to leave. Despite the growing pain, his greed was forcing him to play on. He drank the rest of his coffee and ordered another one, hoping it would clear his head. The coffee did not help and Harvey began to feel steadily worse. An ace and a king followed by a seven, a four and a ten, and then two queens helped him to stay at the table. Jean-Pierre forced himself not to look at his watch. The dealer gave Jean-Pierre a seven, Harvey another ace and the young man a two. Quite suddenly, almost exactly on the hour, Harvey could bear the pain no longer. He tried to stand up and leave the table.
“Le jeu a commencé, Monsieur,” the dealer said formally.
“Go fuck yourself,” said Harvey and collapsed to the ground, gripping his stomach in agony. Jean-Pierre sat motionless while the croupiers and gamblers milled around helplessly. Stephen fought his way through the circle which had gathered around Harvey.
“Stand back, please. I am a doctor.”
The crowd moved back quickly, relieved to have a professional man on the scene.
“What is it, Doctor?” gasped Harvey, who felt the end of the world was about to come.
“I don’t know yet,” replied Stephen. Robin had warned him that from collapse to passing out might be as short a time as ten minutes, so he set to work fast. He loosened Harvey’s tie and took his pulse. He then undid his shirt and started feeling his abdomen.
“Have you a pain in the stomach?”
“Yes,” groaned Harvey.
“Did it come on suddenly?”
“Yes.”
“Can you try and describe the quality of the pain? Is it stabbing, burning or gripping?”
“Gripping.”
“Where is it most painful?”
Harvey touched the right side of his stomach. Stephen pressed down the tip of the ninth rib, making Harvey bellow with pain.
“Ah,” said Stephen, “a positive Murphy’s sign. You probably have an acutely inflamed gall bladder. I’m afraid that may mean gallstones.” He continued to palpate the massive abdomen gently. “It looks as if a stone has come out of your gall bladder and is passing down the tube to your intestine—it’s the squeezing of that tube that’s giving you such dreadful pain. I’m afraid your gall bladder and the stone must be removed at once. I can only hope there is someone at the hospital who can perform an emergency operation.”
Jean-Pierre came in bang on cue:
“Doctor Wiley Barker is staying at my hotel.”
“Wiley Barker, the American surgeon?”
“Yes, yes,” said Jean-Pierre. “The chap who’s been taking care of Nixon.”
“My God, what a piece of luck. We couldn’t have anyone better, but he’s very expensive.”
“I don’t give a damn about the expense,” wailed Harvey.
“Well, it might be as high as $50,000.”
“I don’t care if it’s $100,000,” screamed Harvey. At that moment he would have been willing to part with his entire fortune.
“Right,” said Stephen. “You, sir,” looking at Jean-Pierre, “ring for an ambulance and then contact Doctor Barker and ask if he can get to the hospital immediately. Tell him it’s an emergency. This gentleman requires a surgeon of the highest qualifications.”
“You’re damn right I do,” said Harvey, and passed out.
Jean-Pierre left the Casino and called over his transmitter:
“Action stations. Action stations.”
Robin left the Hôtel de Paris and took a taxi. He would have given $100,000 to change places with the driver, but the car was already moving relentlessly toward the hospital. It was too late to turn back now.
James smashed the ambulance into first gear and rushed to the Casino, siren blaring. He was luckier than Robin. With so much to concentrate on he didn’t have time to consider the consequences of what he was doing.
Eleven minutes and forty-one seconds later he arrived, leaped out of the driver’s seat, opened the back door, gathered the stretcher and rushed up the Casino steps in his long white coat. Jean-Pierre was standing expectantly on the top step waiting for him. No words passed between them as he guided James quickly through the Salon des Amériques where Stephen was bending over Harvey. The stretcher was placed on the floor. It took all three of them to lift Harvey Metcalfe’s 227 lbs. onto the canvas. Stephen and James picked up the stretcher and took him quickly through to the waiting ambulance, followed by Jean-Pierre.
“Where are you going with my boss?” demanded a voice.
Startled, the three of them turned around. It was Harvey Metcalfe’s chauffeur, standing by the white Rolls Royce. After a moment’s hesitation, Jean-Pierre took over.
“Mr. Metcalfe has collapsed and has to go to hospital for an emergency operation. You must return to the yacht immediately, tell the staff to have his cabin ready and await further instructions.”
The chauffeur touched his cap and ran to the Rolls Royce. James leaped behind the wheel, while Stephen and Jean-Pierre joined Harvey in the back of the vehicle.
“Hell, that was close. Well done, Jean-Pierre. I was speechless,” admitted Stephen.
“It was nothing,” said Jean-Pierre, sweat pouring down his face.
The ambulance shot off like a scalded cat. Stephen and Jean-Pierre both replaced their jackets with the long white laboratory coats left on the seat and Stephen put the stethoscope around his neck.
“It looks to me as if he’s dead,” said Jean-Pierre.
“Robin says he isn’t,” said Stephen.
“How can he tell from four miles away?”
“I don’t know. We’ll just have to take his word for it.”
James screeched to a halt outside the entrance to the hospital. Stephen and Jean-Pierre hurried their patient through to the operating theater. James returned the ambulance to the car park and quickly joined the others in the theater.
Robin, scrubbed up and gowned, was there to meet them at the door and while they were strapping Harvey Metcalfe to the operating table in the small room next to the theater, he spoke for the first time:
“All of you, change your clothes. And Jean-Pierre, you scrub up as instructed.”
All three of them changed and Jean-Pierre started to wash immediately—a long, laborious process which Robin had firmly taught him must never be cut short. Postoperative septicaemia formed no part of his plan. Jean-Pierre appeared from the scrubbing-up room ready for action.
“Now, relax. We’ve done this nine times already. Just carry on exactly as if we were still in St. Thomas’s.”
Stephen moved behind the mobile Boyles machine. For four weeks he had been training as an anesthetist: he had rendered James and a faintly protesting Jean-Pierre unconscious twice each in practice runs at St. Thomas’s. Now was his chance to exercise his new powers over Harvey Metcalfe.
Robin removed a syringe from a plastic packet and injected 250 mg. of thiopentone into Harvey’s arm. The patient sank back into a deep sleep. Quickly and efficiently Jean-Pierre and James undressed Harvey and then covered him in a sheet. Stephen placed the mask from the Boyles machine over Metcalfe’s nose. The two flow-meters on the back of the machine showed 5 liters of nitrous oxide and 3 liters of oxygen.
“Take his pulse,” said Robin.
Stephen placed a finger in front of the ear just above the lobe to check the pre-auricular pulse. It was 70.
“Wheel him through into the theater,” instructed Robin.
James pushed the trolley into the next room until it was just under the operating lights. Stephen trundled the Boyles machine along behind them.
The operating theater was windowless and coldly sterile. Gleaming white tiles covered every wall from floor to ceiling, and it contained only the equipment needed for one operation. Jean-Pierre had covered Harvey with a sterile green sheet, leaving only his head and left arm exposed. One trolley of sterile instruments, drapes and towels had been carefully laid out by the theater nurse, and stood covered with a ster
ile sheet. Robin hung the bottle of intravenous fluid from a standard near the head of the table and taped the end of the tubing to Harvey’s left arm to complete the preparation. Stephen sat at the head of the table with the Boyles machine and adjusted the face mask over Harvey’s mouth and nose. Only one of the three massive operating lights hanging directly over Harvey had been turned on, causing a spotlight effect on the protruding bulge of his abdomen.
Eight eyes stared down on their victim. Robin continued:
“I shall give exactly the same instructions as I did in all our rehearsals, so just concentrate. First, I shall clean the abdomen with a skin preparation of iodine.”
Robin had all the instruments ready on the side of the table next to Harvey’s feet. James lifted the sheet and folded it back over Harvey’s legs, then he carefully removed the sterile sheet covering the trolley of instruments and poured iodine into one of the small basins. Robin picked up a swab in a pair of forceps and dipped it in the iodine solution. With a swift action up, down, and over the abdomen, he cleaned about 1 square foot of Harvey’s massive body, throwing the swab into a bin and repeating the action with a fresh one. Next he placed a sterile towel below Harvey’s chin, covering his chest, and another over his hips and thighs. A third one he placed lengthways along the left-hand side of his body and a final one along the right-hand side, leaving a 9-inch square of flabby belly exposed. He put a towel clip on each corner to secure them safely and then placed the laparotomy drapes over the prepared site. Robin was now ready.
“Scalpel.”
Jean-Pierre placed what he would have called a knife firmly in Robin’s outstretched palm, as a runner might when passing a baton. James’s apprehensive eyes met Jean-Pierre’s across the operating table, while Stephen concentrated on Harvey’s breathing. Robin hesitated only for a second and then made a 10 cm. paramedian incision, reaching about 3 cm. into the fat. Robin had rarely seen a larger stomach: he could probably have gone as far as 8 cm. deep without reaching the muscle. Blood started flowing everywhere, which Robin stopped with diathermy. No sooner had he finished the incision and stanched the flow of blood than he began to stitch up the patient’s wound with a 3/0 interrupted plain catgut for ten stitches.
“That will dissolve within a week,” he explained.
He then closed the skin with a 2/0 interrupted plain silk, using an atraumatic needle. Then he cleaned the wound, removing the patches of blood that still remained. Finally, he placed a medium self-adhesive wound dressing over his handiwork.
James took off the drapes and sterile towels and placed them in the bin while Robin and Jean-Pierre put Metcalfe into a hospital gown and carefully packed his clothes in a gray plastic bag.
“He’s coming around,” said Stephen.
Robin took another syringe and injected 10 mg. of diazepan.
“That will keep him asleep for at least 30 minutes,” he said, “and in any case, he’ll be ga-ga for about three hours and won’t remember much of what has happened. James, fetch the ambulance immediately and bring it around to the front of the hospital.”
James left the theater and changed back into his clothes, a procedure which he could now perform in 90 seconds. He disappeared to the car park.
“Now, you two, get changed and then place Harvey very carefully in the ambulance and Jean-Pierre, wait in the back with him. Stephen, you carry out your next assignment.”
Stephen and Jean-Pierre changed quickly, back into their long white coats and wheeled the slumbering Harvey Metcalfe gently toward the ambulance. Once safely in, Stephen ran to the public telephone by the hospital entrance, checked a piece of paper in his wallet and dialed.
“Hello, Nice-Matin? My name’s Terry Robards of the New York Times. I’m here on holiday, and I have a great little story for you…”
Robin returned to the operating theater and wheeled the trolley of instruments he had used to the sterilizing room, and left them there to be dealt with by the hospital theater staff in the morning. He picked up the plastic bag containing Harvey’s clothes and, going through to the changing room, quickly removed his operating gown, cap and mask and put on his own clothes. He went in search of the theater sister, and smiled charmingly at her.
“All finished, ma soeur. I have left the instruments by the sterilizer. Please thank Monsieur Bartise for me once again.”
“Oui, Monsieur. Notre plaisir. Je suis heureuse d’être à même de vous aider. Votre infirmière de l’Auxiliaire Médicale est arrivée.”
A few moments later, Robin walked to the ambulance, accompanied by the agency nurse. He helped her into the back.
“Drive very slowly and carefully to the harbor.”
James nodded and set off at funeral pace.
“Nurse Faubert.”
“Yes, Doctor Barker.” Her hands were tucked primly under her blue cape, and her French accent was enchanting. Robin thought Harvey would not find her ministrations unwelcome.
“My patient has just had an operation for the removal of a gallstone and will need plenty of rest.”
With that Robin took out of his pocket a gallstone the size of an orange with a hospital tag on it which read “Harvey Metcalfe.” Robin had in fact acquired the huge stone from St. Thomas’s Hospital, the original owner being a 6 ft. 6 in. West Indian bus conductor on the No. 14 route. Stephen and Jean-Pierre stared at it in disbelief. The nurse checked her new charge’s pulse and respiration.
“If I were your patient, Nurse Faubert,” said Jean-Pierre, “I should take good care never to recover.”
By the time they arrived at the yacht, Robin had briefed the nurse on diet and rest, and told her that he would be around to see his patient at 11 A.M. the next day. They left Harvey sleeping soundly in his large cabin, stewards and staff clucking attentively.
James drove the other three back to the hospital, deposited the ambulance in the car park and left the keys with reception. The four of them then headed back to the hotel by separate routes. Robin was the last to arrive at room 217, just after 3:30 A.M. He collapsed into an armchair.
“Will you allow me a whiskey, Stephen?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Good God, he meant it,” said Robin, and downed a large Johnny Walker before handing the bottle over to Jean-Pierre.
“He will be all right, won’t he?” said James.
“You sound quite concerned for him. Yes, he can have his ten stitches out in a week’s time and all he’ll have is a nasty scar to brag about to his friends. I must get some sleep. I have to see our victim at 11 tomorrow morning and the confrontation may well be harder than the operation. You were all great tonight. My God, am I glad we had all those sessions at St. Thomas’s. If you’re ever out of work and I need a croupier, a driver and an anesthetist, I’ll know who to ring.”
The others left and Robin collapsed onto his bed, exhausted. He fell into a deep sleep and woke just after 8 the next morning, to discover he was still fully dressed. That had not happened to him since his days as a young houseman, when he had been on night duty after a fourteen-hour day without a break. Robin had a long soothing bath in very hot water. He dressed and put on a clean shirt and suit, ready for his face-to-face meeting with Harvey Metcalfe. His newly acquired mustache and rimless glasses and the success of the operation made him feel a little like the famous surgeon he was impersonating.
The other three all appeared during the next hour to wish him luck and elected to wait in room 217 for his return. Stephen had checked them all out of the hotel and booked a flight to London for late that afternoon. Robin left, again taking the staircase rather than the lift. Once outside the hotel, he walked a little way before hailing a taxi to drive him to the harbor.
It was not hard to find the Messenger Boy. She was a gleaming, newly painted 100-footer lying at the east end of the harbor. She sported a massive Panamanian flag on her stern mast, which Robin assumed must be for tax purposes. He ascended the gangplank and was met by Nurse Faubert.
“Bonjour, Docteur B
arker.”
“Good morning, Nurse. How is Mr. Metcalfe?”
“He has had a very peaceful night and is having a light breakfast and making a few telephone calls. Would you like to see him now?”
“Yes, please.”
Robin entered the magnificent cabin and faced the man he had spent eight weeks plotting and planning against. He was talking into the telephone:
“Yes, I’m fine, dear. But it was an A-1 emergency at the time. Don’t worry, I’ll live,” and he put the telephone down. “Doctor Barker, I have just spoken to my wife in Massachusetts and told her that I owe you my life. Even at 5 A.M. she seemed pleased. I understand that I had private surgery, a private ambulance and that you saved my life. Or that’s what it says in Nice-Matin.”
There was the old picture of Harvey in Bermuda shorts on the deck of the Messenger Boy, familiar to Robin from his dossier. The headline read “Millionnaire s’évanouit au Casino” over “La Vie d’un Millionaire Américain a été sauvée par une Opération Urgente Dramatique!” Stephen would be pleased.
“Tell me, Doctor,” said Harvey with relish, “was I really in danger?”
“Well, you were on the critical list, and the consequences might have been fairly serious if we hadn’t removed this from your stomach.” Robin took out the inscribed gall stone from his pocket with a flourish.
Harvey’s eyes grew large as saucers.
“Gee, have I really been walking round with that inside me all this time? Isn’t that something? I can’t thank you enough. If ever I can do anything for you, Doctor, don’t hesitate to call on me.” He offered Robin a grape. “Look, you’re going to see me through this thing, aren’t you? I don’t think the nurse fully appreciates the gravity of my case.”