Mercury's Rise (Silver Rush 04) by Ann Parker

“Marshal Robbins, Doctor Prochazka, Mrs. Stannert.” He left Inez on the threshold and trotted back down the path after Mrs. Pace.
    Inez entered the long, low-slung building. The walls opened onto a clinic setting, with a waiting area being primary. A number of empty chairs occupied the space, accompanied by yet another statue of Hermes on a corner pedestal. An entryway leading further into the building yielded an examination area, where two men sat. One was behind a desk, drumming fingers on the surface, the other leaned an elbow on a nearby table, idly turning a white tabletop statuette this way and that. Behind them, another door, half ajar, revealed an unlit slice of a room shrouded in shadows.
    The man behind the desk saw her standing in the waiting area, rose, and moved around the desk to the table. He motioned her forward impatiently. She recognized the tall, almost emaciated form of the white-coated apparition from the night before. Today, he was dressed in a somber dark suit, watch chain and fob bridging one side of the plain black waistcoat to the other, a stand-up collar, higher than fashion might dictate, held closed with an untidy two-in-four knot. The wild mane of hair she recalled from the previous night had been fiercely tamed with a copious amount of grease, and combed straight back with nary a ripple or wave evident.
    His companion stopped playing with the figurine and stood as well, well-brushed bowler hat in hand. Compact, non-prepossessing, and with a tidy Van Dyke beard, he was in stark contrast to the slouching rail of a man beside him.
    The compact man stepped forward, “Mrs. Stannert? I’m Marshal Robbins, and this,” he nodded at the scarecrow, “is Dr. Prochazka. This here is his clinic, which he’s kindly offered so as to allow us to talk about yesterday’s unfortunate events. Please.” He gestured to a chair on the opposite side of the table.
    Dr. Prochazka, Inez thought, did not look as if the takeover of his clinic was his idea, let alone his offer. He slouched back down into his chair, face drawn. The spectacles that he had pulled off upon standing, he now tapped idly on a black and red bound journal set askew on the table. Inez could just make out the upside-down gold gilt letters that spelled out Physician’s Day-Book & Journal.
    The marble statue standing guard over their meeting drew her eye. No fig leaf on this one, instead the statue sported a well-draped arm and lower torso, with the marble folds falling to sandals. He had a stone head of hair as tightly curled as Dr. Prochazka’s the previous evening, only the statue’s coiffure was considerably neater and shorter. Under his shoulder rested a long staff, with a snake coiled around it. Curious, she leaned over and touched the snake. The marble was cold, dense to the touch. “This is no Hermes or Mercury,” she remarked.
    Dr. Prochazka jerked as if smacked with a whip. “Hermes is an impostor! They insist on putting him up everywhere at the hotel, even in my waiting room. Everyone suffers the delusion that Hermes is the god of medicine. As you would say, poppycock!”
    It would not be what Inez would choose to say, but she let it go.
    “This is Asclepius.” He picked up the statue, long fingers curling completely around the muscular stone midriff. “The proper god of healing and medicine. Few outside the medical profession seem to know or care. Do you know what Hermes is god of?”
    Inez felt that she was being subjected to an impromptu oral exam on Greek and Roman mythology.
    “Ah, well,” she stuttered. “Hermes is the messenger of the gods, of course. He is also god of omens, and animal husbandry. And travel.” She searched her memory, trying to dredge up some of her classical training.
    “God of trade. Commerce .” Prochazka put special emphasis on the word, as if it were something unclean. “What has that to do with healing, hmmm? Or medicine? Although some think if you do not make money from an endeavor,