Then Doctor Crump arrived. Grummet had met him not a hundred yards from the vicarage gate. He was a large, rather heavy-looking man, with a clean-shaven face and a double chin. He was dressed in a grey morning coat (he always affected grey), with a chequered black and white tie. "What's the trouble?" he said, entering and staring without a shadow of surprise at the Angel's radiant face.
"This--_ahem_--gentleman," said the Vicar, "or--_ah_--Angel"--the Angel bowed--"is suffering from a gunshot wound."
"Gunshot wound!" said Doctor Crump. "In July! May I look at it, Mr--Angel, I think you said?"
"He will probably be able to assuage your pain," said the Vicar. "Let me assist you to remove your coat?"
"Spinal curvature?" muttered Doctor Crump quite audibly, walking round behind the Angel. "No! abnormal growth. Hullo! This is odd!" He clutched the left wing. "Curious," he said. "Reduplication of the anterior limb--bifid coracoid. Possible, of course, but I've never seen it before." The angel winced under his hands. "Humerus. Radius and Ulna. All there. Congenital, of course. Humerus broken. Curious integumentary simulation of feathers. Dear me. Almost avian. Probably of considerable interest in comparative anatomy. I never did!----How did this gunshot happen, Mr Angel?"
The Vicar was amazed at the Doctor's matter-of-fact manner.
"Our friend," said the Angel, moving his head at the Vicar.
"Unhappily it is my doing," said the Vicar, stepping forward, explanatory. "I mistook the gentleman--the Angel (_ahem_)--for a large bird----"
"Mistook him for a large bird! What next? Your eyes want seeing to," said Doctor Crump. "I've told you so before." He went on patting and feeling, keeping time with a series of grunts and inarticulate mutterings.... "But this is really a very good bit of amateur bandaging," said he. "I think I shall leave it. Curious malformation this is! Don't you find it inconvenient, Mr Angel?"
He suddenly walked round so as to look in the Angel's face.
The Angel thought he referred to the wound. "It is rather," he said.
"If it wasn't for the bones I should say paint with iodine night and morning. Nothing like iodine. You could paint your face flat with it. But the osseous outgrowth, the bones, you know, complicate things. I could saw them off, of course. It's not a thing one should have done in a hurry----"