"Yes, it's my first visit."
"Won't you sit down?"
He spoke with the ease of a host, and sank into his deck chair, laying his hat down upon his knees and stretching out his legs, from which he pulled up the white ducks a little way. Isaacson sat down on a smaller chair, leaned forward, and said, in a very practical, businesslike voice: "No doubt Mr. or Mrs. Armine--or both of them, perhaps, has explained how I have come into this affair? I'm an old friend of your patient."
"So I gathered," said Doctor Hartley, in a voice that was remarkably dry.
"I knew him long before he was married, very long before he was ever a sick man, and being out here, and hearing about this sudden and severe illness, of course I called to see how he was."
"Very natural."
"Probably you know my name as a London consulting physician."
"Decidedly. Your success, of course, is great, Doctor Isaacson. Indeed, I wonder you are able to take a holiday. I wonder the ladies will let you go."
He smiled, and touched his moustache affectionately.
"Why the ladies, especially?"
"I understood your practice lay chiefly among the neurotic smart women of London."
"No."
Isaacson's voice echoed the dryness of Doctor Hartley's.
"I'm sorry."
"May I ask why?"
"On the other side of the water we find them--shall I say the best type of patients?"
"Ah!"
Isaacson remembered the sentence of Mrs. Armine which had sent him straight to the sick man. He seemed to detect her cruel prompting in the half-evasive yet sufficiently clear words just spoken.
"Now about Mr. Armine," he said, brushing the topic of himself away. "I am sure--"
But Doctor Hartley interrupted with quiet firmness. One quality he seemed to have in the fullest abundance. He seemed to be largely self-possessed.
"It always clears the ground to be frank, I find," he said, smoothing out some creases in his ducks. "I don't require a consultation, Doctor Isaacson. I don't consider it a case that needs a consultation at present. Directly I do, I shall be glad to call you in."
Isaacson looked down at the rug beneath his chair.
"You consider Mr. Armine going on satisfactorily?" he asked, looking up.
"It's a severe case of sunstroke. It will take time and care. I have decided to stay aboard for a few days to devote myself entirely to it."
"Very good of you."
"I have no doubt whatever of very soon pulling my patient round."
"You don't see any complications in the case?"
"Complications?"
The tone was distinctly, almost alertly, hostile. But Isaacson reiterated coolly: "Yes, complications. You are quite satisfied this is a case of sunstroke?"