Clarendon was undeniably irritating at times to ordinary
folk; for he never tired of depreciating the service of the individual
as contrasted with the service of mankind as a whole, and in censuring
men of learning who mingled domestic life or outside interests with
their pursuit of abstract science. His enemies called him a bore; but
his admirers, pausing before the white heat of ecstasy into which
he would work himself, became almost ashamed of ever having had any
standards or aspirations outside the one divine sphere of unalloyed
knowledge. The doctor's travels were extensive and Georgina generally accompanied
him on the shorter ones. Three times, however, he had taken long,
lone jaunts to strange and distant places in his studies of exotic
fevers and half-fabulous plagues; for he knew that it is out of the
unknown lands of cryptic and immemorial Asia that most of the earth's
diseases spring. On each of these occasions he had brought back curious
mementoes which added to the eccentricity of his home, not least among
which was the needlessly large staff of eight Tibetan servants picked
up somewhere in U-tsang during an epidemic of which the world never
heard, but amidst which Clarendon had discovered and isolated the
germ of black fever. These men, taller than most Tibetans and clearly
belonging to a stock but little investigated in the outside world, were
of a skeletonic leanness which made one wonder whether the doctor had
sought to symbolize in them the anatomical models of his college years. Their aspect, in the loose black silk robes of Boupa priests which he
chose to give them, was grotesque in the highest degree; and there was
an unsmiling silence and stiffness in their motions which enhanced
their air of fantasy and gave Georgina a queer, awed feeling of having
stumbled into the pages of _Vathek_ or the _Arabian Nights_. But queerest of all was the general factotum or clinic-man, whom
Clarendon addressed as Surama, and whom he had brought back with him
after a long stay in Northern Africa, during which he had studied
certain odd intermittent fevers among the mysterious Saharan Tuaregs,
whose descent from the primal race of lost Atlantis is an old
archeological rumor. Surama, a man of great intelligence and seemingly
inexhaustible erudition, was as morbidly lean as the Tibetan servants;
with swarthy, parchmentlike skin drawn so tightly over his bald pate
and hairless face that every line of the skull stood out in ghastly
prominence--this death's-head effect being heightened by lusterlessly
burning black eyes set with a depth which left to common visibility
only a pair of dark, vacant sockets. Unlike the ideal subordinate, he
seemed despite his impassive features to spend an effort in concealing
such emotions as he possessed. Instead, he carried about an insidious
atmosphere of irony or amusement, accompanied at certain moments by
a deep, guttural chuckle like that of a giant turtle which has just
torn to pieces some furry animal and is ambling away toward the sea. His race appeared to be Caucasian, but could not be classified more
closely than that. Some of Clarendon's friends thought he looked like
a high-caste Hindoo notwithstanding his accent-less speech, while many
agreed with Georgina--who disliked him--when she gave her opinion that
a Pharaoh's mummy, if miraculously brought to life, would form a very
apt twin for this sardonic skeleton. Dalton, absorbed in his up-hill political battles and isolated from
Eastern interests through the peculiar self-sufficiency of the old
West, had not followed the meteoric rise of his former comrade;
Clarendon had actually heard nothing of one so far outside his chosen
world of science as the governor. Being of independent and even of
abundant means, the Clarendons had for many years stuck to their old
Manhattan mansion in East Nineteenth Street; whose ghosts must have
looked sorely askance at the bizarrerie of Surama and the Tibetans. Then, through the doctor's wish to transfer his base of medical
observation, the great change had suddenly come, and they had crossed
the continent to take up a secluded life in San Francisco; buying the
gloomy old Bannister place near Goat Hill, overlooking the bay, and
establishing their strange household in a rambling, French-roofed relic
of mid-Victorian design and gold-rush parvenu display, set amidst
high-walled grounds in a region still half suburban. Dr. Clarendon, though better satisfied than in New York, still felt
cramped for lack of opportunities to apply and test his pathological
theories. Unworldly as he was, he had never thought of using his
reputation as an influence to gain public appointment; though more and
more he realized that only the medical directorship of a government or
a charitable institution--a prison, almshouse, or hospital--would give
him a field of sufficient width to complete his researches and make his
discoveries of the greatest use to humanity and science at large. Then he had run into James Dalton by sheer accident one afternoon in
Market Street as the governor was swinging out of the Royal Hotel. Georgina had been with him, and an almost instant recognition had
heightened the drama of the reunion. Mutual ignorance of one another's
progress had bred long explanations and histories, and Clarendon was
pleased to find that he had so important an official for a friend. Dalton and Georgina, exchanging many a glance, felt more than a trace
of their youthful tenderness; and a friendship was then and there
revived which led to frequent calls and a fuller and fuller exchange of
confidences. James Dalton learned of his old protegé's need for political
appointment, and sought, true to his protective rôle of school and
college days, to devise some means of giving "Little Alf" the needed
position and scope. He had, it is true, wide appointive powers; but the
legislature's constant attacks and encroachments forced him to exercise
these with the utmost discretion. At length, however, scarcely three
months after the sudden reunion, the foremost institutional medical
office in the state fell vacant. Weighing all the elements with care,
and conscious that his friend's achievements and reputation would
justify the most substantial rewards, the governor felt at last able
to act. Formalities were few, and on the 8th of November, 189--, Dr.
Alfred Schuyler Clarendon became medical director of the California
State Penitentiary at San Quentin. 2


In scarcely more than a month the hopes of Dr. Clarendon's admirers
were amply fulfilled. Sweeping changes in methods brought to the
prison's medical routine an efficiency never before dreamed of; and
though the subordinates were naturally not without jealousy, they
were obliged to admit the magical results of a really great man's
superintendence.