He doesn't want the place to get a bad name.'
'How long has Templeton been here?'
'Three or four months.
He's been in bed most of the time.
He's for it all right.
Ivy Bishop'll be a damned fool if she gets stuck on him.
She's got a good chance of getting well.
I've seen so many of them, you know, I can tell.
When I look at a fellow I make up my mind at once whether he'll get well or whether he won't, and if he won't I can make a pretty shrewd guess how long he'll last.
I'm very seldom mistaken.
I give Templeton about two years myself.'
McLeod gave Ashenden a speculative look and Ashenden, knowing what he was thinking, though he tried to be amused, could not help feeling somewhat concerned.
There was a twinkle in McLeod's eyes.
He plainly knew what was passing through Ashenden's mind.
'You'll get all right.
I wouldn't have mentioned it if I hadn't been pretty sure of that.
I don't want Dr Lennox to hoof me out for putting the fear of God into his bloody patients.'
Then Ashenden's nurse came to take him back to bed.
Even though he had only sat out for an hour, he was tired, and was glad to find himself once more between the sheets.
Dr Lennox came in to see him in the course of the evening.
He looked at his temperature chart.
'That's not so bad,' he said.
Dr Lennox was small, brisk and genial.
He was a good enough doctor, an excellent business man, and an enthusiastic fisherman.
When the fishing season began he was inclined to leave the care of his patients to his assistants; the patients grumbled a little, but were glad enough to eat the young salmon he brought back to vary their meals.
He was fond of talking, and now, standing at the end of Ashenden's bed, he asked him, in his broad Scots, whether he had got into conversation with any of the patients that afternoon.
Ashenden told him the nurse had introduced him to McLeod.
Dr Lennox laughed.
'The oldest living inhabitant.
He knows more about the sanatorium and its inmates than I do.
How he gets his information I haven't an idea, but there's not a thing about the private lives of anyone under this roof that he doesn't know.
There's not an old maid in the place with a keener nose for a bit of scandal.
Did he tell you about Campbell?'
'He mentioned him.'
'He hates Campbell, and Campbell hates him.
Funny, when you come to think of it, those two men, they've been here for seventeen years and they've got about one sound lung between them.
They loathe the sight of one another.
I've had to refuse to listen to the complaints about one another that they come to me with.
Campbell's room is just below McLeod's and Campbell plays the fiddle.
It drives McLeod wild.
He says he's been listening to the same tunes for fifteen years, but Campbell says McLeod doesn't know one tune from another. McLeod wants me to stop Campbell playing, but I can't do that, he's got a perfect right to play so long as he doesn't play in the silence hours.
I've offered to change McLeod's room, but he won't do that.
He says Campbell only plays to drive him out of the room because it's the best in the house, and he's damned if he's going to have it.
It's queer, isn't it, that two middle-aged men should think it worth while to make life hell for one another.
Neither can leave the other alone.
They have their meals at the same table, they play bridge together; and not a day passes without a row.
Sometimes I've threatened to turn them both out if they don't behave like sensible fellows.
That keeps them quiet for a bit.
They don't want to go.
They've been here so long, they've got no one any more who gives a damn for them, and they can't cope with the world outside.