Call Mr. Fortune

Call Mr. Fortune by H.C. Bailey
1920

CASE I
THE ARCHDUKE'S TEA
MR. REGINALD FORTUNE, M.A., M.B., B.Ch., F.R.C.S., was
having a lecture from his father.
"You only do just enough," Dr. Fortune complained. "Never brilliant.
No zeal. Now, Reginald, it won't do. Just enough is always too little.
Take my word for it. And do be attentive to the Archduke. God bless
you!"
"Have a good time, sir," said Mr. Reginald Fortune, and watched his
father settle down in the car (a long process) beside his mother and
drive off. They were gone at last, which Reginald had begun to think
impossible, and the opulent practice of Dr. Fortune lay for a month in
the virgin hands of Reginald.
"Beautifully patient the mater is," Reginald communed with himself as
he ate his third muffin. "Fretful game to spend your life waitin' for a
man to get ready. Quaint old bird, the pater. Death-bed manner for a
tummy-ache. Wonder the patients lap it up."
But old Dr. Fortune was good at diagnosis, and he had his reasons for
saying that Reggie lacked zeal. At Oxford, at his hospital, Reggie did
what was necessary to take respectable degrees, but no more than he
could help. It was remarked by his dean that he did things too easily.
He always had plenty of time, and spent it here, there, and everywhere,
on musical comedy and prehistoric man, golf and the newer chemistry,
bargees and psychical research. There was nothing which he knew

profoundly, but hardly anything of which he did not know enough to
find his way about in it. Nobody, except his mother, had ever liked him
too much, for he was a self-sufficient creature, but everybody liked him
enough; he got on comfortably with everybody from barmaids to dons.
He was of a round and cheerful countenance and a perpetual appetite.
This gave him a solidity of aspect emphasized by his extreme neatness.
Neither his hair nor anything else of his was ever ruffled. He was more
at his ease with the world than a man has a right to be at thirty-five.
It is presumed that he had never wanted anything which he had not got.
Old Dr. Fortune possessed a small fortune and a rich practice, and
Reggie enjoyed the proceeds and proposed to inherit both. The practice
lay in that pleasant outer suburb of London called Westhampton, a
region of commons and a large park, sacred to the well-to-do, and still
boasting one or two houses inhabited by what auctioneers call the
nobility.
In Boldrewood, the best of these places, there lived at this moment in
Reggie Fortune's existence the Archduke Maurice, the heir-apparent to
the Emperor of Bohemia. You may remember that the Archduke came
to live in England shortly after his marriage. It is, however, not true, as
scandal reported, that his uncle the Emperor sent him into exile. There
is reason to believe that the Archduchess, a woman equally vehement
and beautiful, was not liked in several European courts. On her return
from the honeymoon she made a booby trap for that drill-sergeant of a
king, Maximilian of Swabia, and for some weeks the Central Powers
were threatening to mobilize. But she was a Serene Highness of the
house of Erbach-Wittelsbach, which traces its descent to Odin, and had
an independent realm of nearly two square miles, with parliament and
army complete, and even the Emperor of Bohemia could not pretend
that Maurice had married beneath him. History will affirm the simple
truth that the Archduke and the Archduchess sought seclusion in
England because they were bored to death by the Bohemian court,
which was perpetually occupied in demonstrating that you can be very
dull without being in the least respectable. The Archduke Maurice was
a man of geniality and extraordinarily natural tastes. His garden - a long

walk - a pint of beer in one of the old Westhampton inns made him a
happy day. The Archduchess was not so simple, for she loved to drive
her own car, a ferocious vehicle. But Archduchesses may not do that in
Bohemia.
Reggie, having eaten all the muffins, lit his pipe and meditated on the
cases left him by his father. Old Mrs. Smythe had her autumn influenza,
and old Talbot Browne had his autumn gout, and the little Robinsons
were putting in their whooping-cough. A kindly world! ... He was
dozing in the dark when the telephone bell rang. Was that Dr. Fortune?
Would he come to Boldrewood at once - at once. The Archduke had
been knocked down by a motor-car and picked up unconscious.
"Poor old pater!" Reggie grinned, as he put his tools together. The pater
would never forgive himself for being out of this. He loved a lord, did
the pater,