Free Doctor On The Boil by Richard Gordon

door, Grimsdyke came in.
    ‘Are you tailing me, or something?’ the student demanded angrily.
    ‘Good evening, Summerbee. Good evening, Stella,’ Grimsdyke said stiffly. ‘Forgive me for not pausing to chat. But I am already late for my dinner, which I take here every night. And doubtless you will be anxious to return Sir Lancelot Spratt’s car before he notices you’ve pinched it.’
    ‘Sir Lancelot Spratt?’ exclaimed Stella. ‘What, you mean that noisy fat old man with the beard who came down to have his chest X-rayed?’
    ‘Yes. The number of that particular wagon is imprinted in my memory, since it invariably seemed to bring trouble.’
    ‘I did not steal it,’ Terry protested furiously. ‘Sir Lancelot happened to lend it to me.’
    ‘A likely story! To one of the students?’ Grimsdyke gave a contemptuous guffaw. ‘Well, I shall leave you to sort it out. Knowing Sir Lancelot, by now its absence is familiar to every policeman in London.’
    ‘What have you let me in for, you stupid nit?’ Stella demanded hotly of Terry.
    ‘Honestly, Stella, I’ve done nothing–’
    Grimsdyke gave him a fatherly pat on the shoulder. ‘Don’t worry, they’ll only nick you for driving away without permission, and I don’t suppose there’s more than three months attached to that.’
    He walked briskly away, the sound of argument a beautiful tune in his ears.
    Grimsdyke delayed his dinner to call first at the Picardy suite. The sitting-room door was opened by Ted, in his dark glasses.
    ‘And how’s the patient?’
    ‘Still in bed, Doctor, like you said. But better in spirits.’
    ‘Good. I noticed you gave it to the papers as influenza.’
    ‘We’ve got to preserve the image, haven’t we?’ Ted nodded towards the closed bedroom door. ‘I wish you’d talk to him, Doctor. About…well, overdoing things. He gets crazy about young girls, you know.’
    ‘I’d say that was a particularly healthy trait.’
    ‘Oh, I suppose it’s all right, as long as they’re over the age of consent. Not that it’s easy to tell these times. And you can hardly ask to see their birth certificates at the crucial moment, can you? Funny, isn’t it,’ he mused. ‘One day it’s criminal, the next day it’s fun. But Eric’s not as young as he was, you know. We’ve got to keep his age dark, naturally, because of his image. He looks fine on the screen, when he’s made-up and lit properly. His little trouble is imagining he’s the same when everything’s for real. He’ll kill himself one day,’ Ted ended gloomily.
    ‘You mean, you want me to give him a fatherly talk – to keep off the birds?’
    ‘Well…not quite so many, and not quite so young. They’re active, those little chicks.’
    ‘You have a point,’ Grimsdyke agreed. ‘Though it’s a lovely way to go.’ He pulled his moustache thoughtfully. ‘All right, I’ll see what I can do.’
    ‘Thank you, Doctor.’ Ted beamed gratefully.
    ‘By the way, if you’d like to mention my name in those newspaper reports, I’ve no objection. So long as I can tell the General Medical Council you did it without my permission.’
    Eric Cavendish was sitting up in bed in orange pyjamas, wearing his toupee and dark glasses. ‘And how are we this evening?’ Grimsdyke asked, shutting the bedroom door behind him.
    ‘I guess I’ll live.’ The actor grinned. ‘That girl you sent to massage my back – she was terrific. I never thought I could enjoy myself so much in bed with a woman, doing nothing but lie on my face and let her stick thumbs into my spine.’
    Grimsdyke sat on the edge of the bed. ‘Talking of women–’
    ‘I know.’ The actor threw aside the magazine he was reading. ‘Ted wants me to take vows of chastity.’
    ‘No. But he feels if you paced yourself more carefully you’d get more mileage out of the dollies in the end. I’ve had more than one case in this hotel,’ Grimsdyke added morbidly, ‘of the girl having to crawl out from underneath when