CHAPTER V
THE EPISODE OF THE NEEDLE THAT DID NOT MATCH
"Sebastian is a great man," I said to Hilda Wade, as I sat one
afternoon over a cup of tea she had brewed for me in her own little
sitting-room. It is one of the alleviations of an hospital
doctor's lot that he may drink tea now and again with the Sister of
his ward. "Whatever else you choose to think of him, you must
admit he is a very great man."
I admired our famous Professor, and I admired Hilda Wade: 'twas a
matter of regret to me that my two admirations did not seem in
return sufficiently to admire one another. "Oh, yes," Hilda
answered, pouring out my second cup; "he is a very great man. I
never denied that. The greatest man, on the whole, I think, that I
have ever come across."
"And he has done splendid work for humanity," I went on, growing
enthusiastic.
"Splendid work! Yes, splendid! (Two lumps, I believe?) He has
done more, I admit, for medical science than any other man I ever
met."
I gazed at her with a curious glance. "Then why, dear lady, do you
keep telling me he is cruel?" I inquired, toasting my feet on the
fender. "It seems contradictory."
She passed me the muffins, and smiled her restrained smile.
"Does the desire to do good to humanity in itself imply a
benevolent disposition?" she answered, obliquely.
"Now you are talking in paradox. Surely, if a man works all his
life long for the good of mankind, that shows he is devoured by
sympathy for his species."
"And when your friend Mr. Bates works all his life long at
observing, and classifying lady-birds, I suppose that shows he is
devoured by sympathy for the race of beetles!"
I laughed at her comical face, she looked at me so quizzically.
"But then," I objected, "the cases are not parallel. Bates kills
and collects his lady-birds; Sebastian cures and benefits
humanity."
Hilda smiled her wise smile once more, and fingered her apron.
"Are the cases so different as you suppose?" she went on, with her
quick glance. "Is it not partly accident? A man of science, you
see, early in life, takes up, half by chance, this, that, or the
other particular form of study. But what the study is in itself, I
fancy, does not greatly matter; do not mere circumstances as often
as not determine it? Surely it is the temperament, on the whole,
that tells: the temperament that is or is not scientific."
"How do you mean? You ARE so enigmatic!"
"Well, in a family of the scientific temperament, it seems to me,
one brother may happen to go in for butterflies--may he not?--and
another for geology, or for submarine telegraphs. Now, the man who
happens to take up butterflies does not make a fortune out of his
hobby--there is no money in butterflies; so we say, accordingly, he
is an unpractical person, who cares nothing for business, and who
is only happy when he is out in the fields with a net, chasing
emperors and tortoise-shells. But the man who happens to fancy
submarine telegraphy most likely invents a lot of new improvements,
takes out dozens of patents, finds money flow in upon him as he
sits in his study, and becomes at last a peer and a millionaire; so
then we say, What a splendid business head he has got, to be sure,
and how immensely he differs from his poor wool-gathering brother,
the entomologist, who can only invent new ways of hatching out
wire-worms! Yet all may really depend on the first chance
direction which led one brother as a boy to buy a butterfly net,
and sent the other into the school laboratory to dabble with an
electric wheel and a cheap battery."
"Then you mean to say it is chance that has made Sebastian?"
Hilda shook her pretty head. "By no means. Don't be so stupid.
We both know Sebastian has a wonderful brain. Whatever was the
work he undertook with that brain in science, he would carry it out
consummately. He is a born thinker. It is like this, don't you
know." She tried to arrange her thoughts. "The particular branch
of science to which Mr. Hiram Maxim's mind happens to have been
directed was the making of machine-guns--and he slays his
thousands. The particular branch to which Sebastian's mind happens
to have been directed was medicine--and he cures as many as Mr.
Maxim kills. It is a turn of the hand that makes all the
difference."
"I see," I said. "The aim of medicine happens to be a benevolent
one."
"Quite so; that's just what I mean. The aim is benevolent; and
Sebastian pursues that aim with the single-minded energy of a
lofty, gifted, and devoted nature--but not a good one!'
"Not good?"
"Oh, no. To be quite frank, he seems to me to pursue it ruthlessly,
cruelly, unscrupulously. He is a man of high ideals, but without
principle. In that respect he reminds one of the great spirits of
the Italian Renaissance--Benvenuto Cellini and so forth--men who
could pore for hours with conscientious artistic care over the
detail of a hem in a sculptured robe, yet could steal out in the
midst of their disinterested toil to plunge a knife in the back of a
rival."
"Sebastian would not do that," I cried. "He is wholly free from
the mean spirit of jealousy."
"No, Sebastian would not do that. You are quite right there; there
is no tinge of meanness in the man's nature. He likes to be first
in the field; but he would acclaim with delight another man's
scientific triumph--if another anticipated him; for would it not
mean a triumph for universal science?--and is not the advancement
of science Sebastian's religion? But . . . he would do almost as
much, or more. He would stab a man without remorse, if he thought
that by stabbing him he could advance knowledge."
I recognised at once the truth of her diagnosis. "Nurse Wade," I
cried, "you are a wonderful woman! I believe you are right; but--
how did you come to think of it?"
A cloud passed over her brow. "I have reason to know it," she
answered, slowly. Then her voice changed. "Take another muffin."
I helped myself and paused. I laid down my cup, and gazed at her.
What a beautiful, tender, sympathetic face! And yet, how able!
She stirred the fire uneasily. I looked and hesitated. I had
often wondered why I never dared ask Hilda Wade one question that
was nearest my heart. I think it must have been because I
respected her so profoundly. The deeper your admiration and
respect for a woman, the harder you find it in the end to ask her.
At last I ALMOST made up my mind. "I cannot think," I began, "what
can have induced a girl like you, with means and friends, with
brains and"--I drew back, then I plumped it out--"beauty, to take
to such a life as this--a life which seems, in many ways, so
unworthy of you!"
She stirred the fire more pensively than ever, and rearranged the
muffin-dish on the little wrought-iron stand in font of the grate.
"And yet," she murmured, looking down, "what life can be better
than the service of one's kind? You think it a great life for
Sebastian!"
"Sebastian! He is a man. That is different; quite different.
But a woman! Especially YOU, dear lady, for whom one feels that
nothing is quite high enough, quite pure enough, quite good enough.
I cannot imagine how--"
She checked me with one wave of her gracious hand. Her movements
were always slow and dignified. "I have a Plan in my life," she
answered earnestly, her eyes meeting mine with a sincere, frank
gaze; "a Plan to which I have resolved to sacrifice everything. It
absorbs my being. Till that Plan is fulfilled--" I saw the tears
were gathering fast on her lashes. She suppressed them with an
effort. "Say no more," she added, faltering. "Infirm of purpose!
I WILL not listen."
I leant forward eagerly, pressing my advantage. The air was
electric. Waves of emotion passed to and fro. "But surely," I
cried, "you do not mean to say--"
She waved me aside once more. "I will not put my hand to the
plough, and then look back," she answered, firmly. "Dr. Cumberledge,
spare me. I came to Nathaniel's for a purpose. I told you at the
time what that purpose was--in part: to be near Sebastian. I want
to be near him . . . for an object I have at heart. Do not ask me
to reveal it; do not ask me to forego it. I am a woman, therefore
weak. But I need your aid. Help me, instead of hindering me."
"Hilda," I cried, leaning forward, with quiverings of my heart, "I
will help you in whatever way you will allow me. But let me at any
rate help you with the feeling that I am helping one who means in
time--"
At that moment, as unkindly fate would have it, the door opened,
and Sebastian entered.
"Nurse Wade," he began, in his iron voice, glancing about him with
stern eyes, "where are those needles I ordered for that operation?
We must be ready in time before Nielsen comes. . . . Cumberledge,
I shall want you."
The golden opportunity had come and gone. It was long before I
found a similar occasion for speaking to Hilda.
Every day after that the feeling deepened upon me that Hilda was
there to watch Sebastian. WHY, I did not know; but it was growing
certain that a life-long duel was in progress between these two--a
duel of some strange and mysterious import.
The first approach to a solution of the problem which I obtained
came a week or two later. Sebastian was engaged in observing a
case where certain unusual symptoms had suddenly supervened. It
was a case of some obscure affection of the heart. I will not
trouble you here with the particular details. We all suspected a
tendency to aneurism. Hilda Wade was in attendance, as she always
was on Sebastian's observation cases. We crowded round, watching.
The Professor himself leaned over the cot with some medicine for
external application in a basin. He gave it to Hilda to hold. I
noticed that as she held it her fingers trembled, and that her eyes
were fixed harder than ever upon Sebastian. He turned round to his
students. "Now this," he began, in a very unconcerned voice, as if
the patient were a toad, "is a most unwonted turn for the disease
to take. It occurs very seldom. In point of fact, I have only
observed the symptom once before; and then it was fatal. The
patient in that instance"--he paused dramatically--"was the
notorious poisoner, Dr. Yorke-Bannerman."
As he uttered the words, Hilda Wade's hands trembled more than
ever, and with a little scream she let the basin fall, breaking it
into fragments.
Sebastian's keen eyes had transfixed her in a second. "How did you
manage to do that?" he asked, with quiet sarcasm, but in a tone
full of meaning.
"The basin was heavy," Hilda faltered. "My hands were trembling--
and it somehow slipped through them. I am not . . . quite
myself . . . not quite well this afternoon. I ought not to have
attempted it."
The Professor's deep-set eyes peered out like gleaming lights from
beneath their overhanging brows. "No; you ought not to have
attempted it," he answered, withering her with a glance. "You
might have let the thing fall on the patient and killed him. As it
is, can't you see you have agitated him with the flurry? Don't
stand there holding your breath, woman: repair your mischief. Get
a cloth and wipe it up, and give ME the bottle."
With skilful haste he administered a little sal volatile and nux
vomica to the swooning patient; while Hilda set about remedying the
damage. "That's better," Sebastian said, in a mollified tone, when
she had brought another basin. There was a singular note of
cloaked triumph in his voice. "Now, we'll begin again. . . . I
was just saying, gentlemen, before this accident, that I had seen
only ONE case of this peculiar form of the tendency before; and
that case was the notorious"--he kept his glittering eyes fixed
harder on Hilda than ever--"the notorious Dr. Yorke-Bannerman."
_I_ was watching Hilda, too. At the words, she trembled violently
all over once more, but with an effort restrained herself. Their
looks met in a searching glance. Hilda's air was proud and
fearless: in Sebastian's, I fancied I detected, after a second,
just a tinge of wavering.
"You remember Yorke-Bannerman's case," he went on. "He committed a
murder--"
"Let ME take the basin!" I cried, for I saw Hilda's hands giving
way a second time, and I was anxious to spare her.
"No, thank you," she answered low, but in a voice that was full of
suppressed defiance. "I will wait and hear this out. I PREFER to
stop here."
As for Sebastian, he seemed now not to notice her, though I was
aware all the time of a sidelong glance of his eye, parrot-wise, in
her direction. "He committed a murder," he went on, "by means of
aconitine--then an almost unknown poison; and, after committing it,
his heart being already weak, he was taken himself with symptoms of
aneurism in a curious form, essentially similar to these; so that
he died before the trial--a lucky escape for him."
He paused rhetorically once more; then he added in the same tone:
"Mental agitation and the terror of detection no doubt accelerated
the fatal result in that instance. He died at once from the shock
of the arrest. It was a natural conclusion. Here we may hope for
a more successful issue."
He spoke to the students, of course, but I could see for all that
that he was keeping his falcon eye fixed hard on Hilda's face. I
glanced aside at her. She never flinched for a second. Neither
said anything directly to the other; still, by their eyes and
mouths, I knew some strange passage of arms had taken place between
them. Sebastian's tone was one of provocation, of defiance, I
might almost say of challenge. Hilda's air I took rather for the
air of calm and resolute, but assured, resistance. He expected her
to answer; she said nothing. Instead of that, she went on holding
the basin now with fingers that WOULD not tremble. Every muscle
was strained. Every tendon was strung. I could see she held
herself in with a will of iron.
The rest of the episode passed off quietly. Sebastian, having
delivered his bolt, began to think less of Hilda and more of the
patient. He went on with his demonstration. As for Hilda, she
gradually relaxed her muscles, and, with a deep-drawn breath,
resumed her natural attitude. The tension was over. They had had
their little skirmish, whatever it might mean, and had it out; now,
they called a truce over the patient's body.
When the case had been disposed of, and the students dismissed, I
went straight into the laboratory to get a few surgical instruments
I had chanced to leave there. For a minute or two, I mislaid my
clinical thermometer, and began hunting for it behind a wooden
partition in the corner of the room by the place for washing test-
tubes. As I stooped down, turning over the various objects about
the tap in my search, Sebastian's voice came to me. He had paused
outside the door, and was speaking in his calm, clear tone, very
low, to Hilda. "So NOW we understand one another, Nurse Wade," he
said, with a significant sneer. "I know whom I have to deal with!"
"And _I_ know, too," Hilda answered, in a voice of placid
confidence.
"Yet you are not afraid?"
"It is not _I_ who have cause for fear. The accused may tremble,
not the prosecutor."
"What! You threaten?"
"No; I do not threaten. Not in words, I mean. My presence here
is in itself a threat, but I make no other. You know now,
unfortunately, WHY I have come. That makes my task harder. But
I will NOT give it up. I will wait and conquer."
Sebastian answered nothing. He strode into the laboratory alone,
tall, grim, unbending, and let himself sink into his easy chair,
looking up with a singular and somewhat sinister smile at his
bottles of microbes. After a minute he stirred the fire, and bent
his head forward, brooding. He held it between his hands, with his
elbows on his knees, and gazed moodily straight before him into the
glowing caves of white-hot coal in the, fireplace. That sinister
smile still played lambent around the corners of his grizzled
moustaches.
I moved noiselessly towards the door, trying to pass behind him
unnoticed. But, alert as ever, his quick ears detected me. With a
sudden start, he raised his head and glanced round. "What! you
here?" he cried, taken aback. For a second he appeared almost to
lose his self-possession.
"I came for my clinical," I answered, with an unconcerned air. "I
have somehow managed to mislay it in the laboratory."
My carefully casual tone seemed to reassure him. He peered about
him with knit brows. "Cumberledge," he asked at last, in a
suspicious voice, "did you hear that woman?"
"The woman in 93? Delirious?"
"No, no. Nurse Wade?"
"Hear her?" I echoed, I must candidly admit with intent to deceive.
"When she broke the basin?"
His forehead relaxed. "Oh! it is nothing," he muttered, hastily.
"A mere point of discipline. She spoke to me just now, and I
thought her tone unbecoming in a subordinate. . . . Like Korah and
his crew, she takes too much upon her. . . . We must get rid of
her, Cumberledge; we must get rid of her. She is a dangerous
woman!"
"She is the most intelligent nurse we have ever had in the place,
sir," I objected, stoutly.
He nodded his head twice. "Intelligent--je vous l'accorde; but
dangerous--dangerous!"
Then he turned to his papers, sorting them out one by one with a
preoccupied face and twitching fingers. I recognised that he
desired to be left alone, so I quitted the laboratory.
I cannot quite say WHY, but ever since Hilda Wade first came to
Nathaniel's my enthusiasm for Sebastian had been cooling
continuously. Admiring his greatness still, I had doubts as to his
goodness. That day I felt I positively mistrusted him. I wondered
what his passage of arms with Hilda might mean. Yet, somehow, I
was shy of alluding to it before her.
One thing, however, was clear to me now--this great campaign that
was being waged between the nurse and the Professor had reference
to the case of Dr. Yorke-Bannerman.
For a time, nothing came of it; the routine of the hospital went on
as usual. The patient with the suspected predisposition to
aneurism kept fairly well for a week or two, and then took a sudden
turn for the worse, presenting at times most unwonted symptoms. He
died unexpectedly. Sebastian, who had watched him every hour,
regarded the matter as of prime importance. "I'm glad it happened
here," he said, rubbing his hands. "A grand opportunity. I wanted
to catch an instance like this before that fellow in Paris had time
to anticipate me. They're all on the lookout. Von Strahlendorff,
of Vienna, has been waiting for just such a patient for years. So
have I. Now fortune has favoured me. Lucky for us he died! We
shall find out everything."
We held a post-mortem, of course, the condition of the blood being
what we most wished to observe; and the autopsy revealed some
unexpected details. One remarkable feature consisted in a certain
undescribed and impoverished state of the contained bodies which
Sebastian, with his eager zeal for science, desired his students to
see and identify. He said it was likely to throw much light on
other ill-understood conditions of the brain and nervous system, as
well as on the peculiar faint odour of the insane, now so well
recognised in all large asylums. In order to compare this abnormal
state with the aspect of the healthy circulating medium, he
proposed to examine a little good living blood side by side with
the morbid specimen under the microscope. Nurse Wade was in
attendance in the laboratory, as usual. The Professor, standing by
the instrument, with one hand on the brass screw, had got the
diseased drop ready arranged for our inspection beforehand, and was
gloating over it himself with scientific enthusiasm. "Grey
corpuscles, you will observe," he said, "almost entirely deficient.
Red, poor in number, and irregular in outline. Plasma, thin.
Nuclei, feeble. A state of body which tells severely against the
due rebuilding of the wasted tissues. Now compare with typical
normal specimen." He removed his eye from the microscope, and
wiped a glass slide with a clean cloth as he spoke. "Nurse Wade,
we know of old the purity and vigour of your circulating fluid.
You shall have the honour of advancing science once more. Hold up
your finger."
Hilda held up her forefinger unhesitatingly. She was used to such
requests; and, indeed, Sebastian had acquired by long experience
the faculty of pinching the finger-tip so hard, and pressing the
point of a needle so dexterously into a minor vessel, that he could
draw at once a small drop of blood without the subject even feeling
it.
The Professor nipped the last joint between his finger and thumb
for a moment till it was black at the end; then he turned to the
saucer at his side, which Hilda herself had placed there, and chose
from it, cat-like, with great deliberation and selective care, a
particular needle. Hilda's eyes followed his every movement as
closely and as fearlessly as ever. Sebastian's hand was raised,
and he was just about to pierce the delicate white skin, when, with
a sudden, quick scream of terror, she snatched her hand away
hastily.
The Professor let the needle drop in his astonishment. "What did
you do that for?" he cried, with an angry dart of the keen eyes.
"This is not the first time I have drawn your blood. You KNEW I
would not hurt you."
Hilda's face had grown strangely pale. But that was not all. I
believe I was the only person present who noticed one unobtrusive
piece of sleight-of-hand which she hurriedly and skilfully
executed. When the needle slipped from Sebastian's hand, she leant
forward even as she screamed, and caught it, unobserved, in the
folds of her apron. Then her nimble fingers closed over it as if
by magic, and conveyed it with a rapid movement at once to her
pocket. I do not think even Sebastian himself noticed the quick
forward jerk of her eager hands, which would have done honour to a
conjurer. He was too much taken aback by her unexpected behaviour
to observe the needle.
Just as she caught it, Hilda answered his question in a somewhat
flurried voice. "I--I was afraid," she broke out, gasping. "One
gets these little accesses of terror now and again. I--I feel
rather weak. I don't think I will volunteer to supply any more
normal blood this morning."
Sebastian's acute eyes read her through, as so often. With a
trenchant dart he glanced from her to me. I could see he began to
suspect a confederacy. "That will do," he went on, with slow
deliberateness. "Better so. Nurse Wade, I don't know what's
beginning to come over you. You are losing your nerve--which is
fatal in a nurse. Only the other day you let fall and broke a
basin at a most critical moment; and now, you scream aloud on a
trifling apprehension." He paused and glanced around him. "Mr.
Callaghan," he said, turning to our tall, red-haired Irish student,
"YOUR blood is good normal, and YOU are not hysterical." He
selected another needle with studious care. "Give me your finger."
As he picked out the needle, I saw Hilda lean forward again, alert
and watchful, eyeing him with a piercing glance; but, after a
second's consideration, she seemed to satisfy herself, and fell
back without a word. I gathered that she was ready to interfere,
had occasion demanded. But occasion did not demand; and she held
her peace quietly.
The rest of the examination proceeded without a hitch. For a
minute or two, it is true, I fancied that Sebastian betrayed a
certain suppressed agitation--a trifling lack of his accustomed
perspicuity and his luminous exposition. But, after meandering for
a while through a few vague sentences, he soon recovered his wonted
calm; and as he went on with his demonstration, throwing himself
eagerly into the case, his usual scientific enthusiasm came back to
him undiminished. He waxed eloquent (after his fashion) over the
"beautiful" contrast between Callaghan's wholesome blood, "rich in
the vivifying architectonic grey corpuscles which rebuild worn
tissues," and the effete, impoverished, unvitalised fluid which
stagnated in the sluggish veins of the dead patient. The carriers
of oxygen had neglected their proper task; the granules whose duty
it was to bring elaborated food-stuffs to supply the waste of brain
and nerve and muscle had forgotten their cunning. The bricklayers
of the bodily fabric had gone out on strike; the weary scavengers
had declined to remove the useless by-products. His vivid tongue,
his picturesque fancy, ran away with him. I had never heard him
talk better or more incisively before; one could feel sure, as he
spoke, that the arteries of his own acute and teeming brain at that
moment of exaltation were by no means deficient in those energetic
and highly vital globules on whose reparative worth he so
eloquently descanted. "Sure, the Professor makes annywan see right
inside wan's own vascular system," Callaghan whispered aside to me,
in unfeigned admiration.
The demonstration ended in impressive silence. As we streamed out
of the laboratory, aglow with his electric fire, Sebastian held me
back with a bent motion of his shrivelled forefinger. I stayed
behind unwillingly. "Yes, sir?" I said, in an interrogative voice.
The Professor's eyes were fixed intently on the ceiling. His look
was one of rapt inspiration. I stood and waited. "Cumberledge,"
he said at last, coming back to earth with a start, "I see it more
plainly each day that goes. We must get rid of that woman."
"Of Nurse Wade?" I asked, catching my breath.
He roped the grizzled moustache, and blinked the sunken eyes. "She
has lost nerve," he went on, "lost nerve entirely. I shall suggest
that she be dismissed. Her sudden failures of stamina are most
embarrassing at critical junctures."
"Very well, sir," I answered, swallowing a lump in my throat. To
say the truth, I was beginning to be afraid on Hilda's account.
That morning's events had thoroughly disquieted me.
He seemed relieved at my unquestioning acquiescence. "She is a
dangerous edged-tool; that's the truth of it," he went on, still
twirling his moustache with a preoccupied air, and turning over his
stock of needles. "When she's clothed and in her right mind, she
is a valuable accessory--sharp and trenchant like a clean, bright
lancet; but when she allows one of these causeless hysterical fits
to override her tone, she plays one false at once--like a lancet
that slips, or grows dull and rusty." He polished one of the
needles on a soft square of new chamois-leather while he spoke, as
if to give point and illustration to his simile.
I went out from him, much perturbed. The Sebastian I had once
admired and worshipped was beginning to pass from me; in his place
I found a very complex and inferior creation. My idol had feet of
clay. I was loth to acknowledge it.
I stalked along the corridor moodily towards my own room. As I
passed Hilda Wade's door, I saw it half ajar. She stood a little
within, and beckoned me to enter.
I passed in and closed the door behind me. Hilda looked at me with
trustful eyes. Resolute still, her face was yet that of a hunted
creature. "Thank Heaven, I have ONE friend here, at least!" she
said, slowly seating herself. "You saw me catch and conceal the
needle?"
"Yes, I saw you."
She drew it forth from her purse, carefully but loosely wrapped up
in a small tag of tissue-paper. "Here it is!" she said, displaying
it. "Now, I want you to test it."
"In a culture?" I asked; for I guessed her meaning.
She nodded. "Yes, to see what that man has done to it."
"What do you suspect?"
She shrugged her graceful shoulders half imperceptibly.
"How should I know? Anything!"
I gazed at the needle closely. "What made you distrust it?" I
inquired at last, still eyeing it.
She opened a drawer, and took out several others. "See here," she
said, handing me one; "THESE are the needles I keep in antiseptic
wool--the needles with which I always supply the Professor. You
observe their shape--the common surgical patterns. Now, look at
THIS needle, with which the Professor was just going to prick my
finger! You can see for yourself at once it is of bluer steel and
of a different manufacture."
"That is quite true," I answered, examining it with my pocket lens,
which I always carry. "I see the difference. But how did you
detect it?"
"From his face, partly; but partly, too, from the needle itself. I
had my suspicions, and I was watching him closely. Just as he
raised the thing in his hand, half concealing it, so, and showing
only the point, I caught the blue gleam of the steel as the light
glanced off it. It was not the kind I knew. Then I withdrew my
hand at once, feeling sure he meant mischief."
"That was wonderfully quick of you!"
"Quick? Well, yes. Thank Heaven, my mind works fast; my perceptions
are rapid. Otherwise--" she looked grave. "One second more, and
it would have been too late. The man might have killed me."
"You think it is poisoned, then?"
Hilda shook her head with confident dissent. "Poisoned? Oh, no.
He is wiser now. Fifteen years ago, he used poison. But science
has made gigantic strides since then. He would not needlessly
expose himself to-day to the risks of the poisoner."
"Fifteen years ago he used poison?"
She nodded, with the air of one who knows. "I am not speaking at
random," she answered. "I say what I know. Some day I will
explain. For the present, it is enough to tell you I know it."
"And what do you suspect now?" I asked, the weird sense of her
strange power deepening on me every second.
She held up the incriminated needle again.
"Do you see this groove?" she asked, pointing to it with the tip of
another.
I examined it once more at the light with the lens. A longitudinal
groove, apparently ground into one side of the needle, lengthwise,
by means of a small grinding-stone and emery powder, ran for a
quarter of an inch above the point. This groove seemed to me to
have been produced by an amateur, though he must have been one
accustomed to delicate microscopic manipulation; for the edges
under the lens showed slightly rough, like the surface of a file on
a small scale: not smooth and polished, as a needle-maker would
have left them. I said so to Hilda.
"You are quite right," she answered. "That is just what it shows.
I feel sure Sebastian made that groove himself. He could have
bought grooved needles, it is true, such as they sometimes use for
retaining small quantities of lymphs and medicines; but we had none
in stock, and to buy them would be to manufacture evidence against
himself, in case of detection. Besides, the rough, jagged edge
would hold the material he wished to inject all the better, while
its saw-like points would tear the flesh, imperceptibly, but
minutely, and so serve his purpose."
"Which was?"
"Try the needle, and judge for yourself. I prefer you should find
out. You can tell me to-morrow."
"It was quick of you to detect it!" I cried, still turning the
suspicious object over. "The difference is so slight."
"Yes; but you tell me my eyes are as sharp as the needle. Besides,
I had reason to doubt; and Sebastian himself gave me the clue by
selecting his instrument with too great deliberation. He had put
it there with the rest, but it lay a little apart; and as he picked
it up gingerly, I began to doubt. When I saw the blue gleam, my
doubt was at once converted into certainty. Then his eyes, too,
had the look which I know means victory. Benign or baleful, it
goes with his triumphs. I have seen that look before, and when
once it lurks scintillating in the luminous depths of his gleaming
eyeballs, I recognise at once that, whatever his aim, he has
succeeded in it."
"Still, Hilda, I am loth--"
She waved her hand impatiently. "Waste no time," she cried, in an
authoritative voice. "If you happen to let that needle rub
carelessly against the sleeve of your coat you may destroy the
evidence. Take it at once to your room, plunge it into a culture,
and lock it up safe at a proper temperature--where Sebastian cannot
get at it--till the consequences develop."
I did as she bid me. By this time, I was not wholly unprepared for
the result she anticipated. My belief in Sebastian had sunk to
zero, and was rapidly reaching a negative quantity.
At nine the next morning, I tested one drop of the culture under
the microscope. Clear and limpid to the naked eye, it was alive
with small objects of a most suspicious nature, when properly
magnified. I knew those hungry forms. Still, I would not decide
offhand on my own authority in a matter of such moment. Sebastian's
character was at stake--the character of the man who led the
profession. I called in Callaghan, who happened to be in the ward,
and asked him to put his eye to the instrument for a moment. He was
a splendid fellow for the use of high powers, and I had magnified
the culture 300 diameters. "What do you call those?" I asked,
breathless.
He scanned them carefully with his experienced eye. "Is it the
microbes ye mean?" he answered. "An' what 'ud they be, then, if it
wasn't the bacillus of pyaemia?"
"Blood-poisoning!" I ejaculated, horror-struck.
"Aye; blood-poisoning: that's the English of it."
I assumed an air of indifference. "I made them that myself," I
rejoined, as if they were mere ordinary experimental germs; "but I
wanted confirmation of my own opinion. You're sure of the
bacillus?"
"An' haven't I been keeping swarms of those very same bacteria
under close observation for Sebastian for seven weeks past? Why, I
know them as well as I know me own mother."
"Thank you," I said. "That will do." And I carried off the
microscope, bacilli and all, into Hilda Wade's sitting-room. "Look
yourself!" I cried to her.
She stared at them through the instrument with an unmoved face. "I
thought so," she answered shortly. "The bacillus of pyaemia. A
most virulent type. Exactly what I expected."
"You anticipated that result?"
"Absolutely. You see, blood-poisoning matures quickly, and kills
almost to a certainty. Delirium supervenes so soon that the
patient has no chance of explaining suspicions. Besides, it would
all seem so very natural! Everybody would say: 'She got some
slight wound, which microbes from some case she was attending
contaminated.' You may be sure Sebastian thought out all that. He
plans with consummate skill. He had designed everything."
I gazed at her, uncertain. "And what will you DO?" I asked.
"Expose him?"
She opened both her palms with a blank gesture of helplessness.
"It is useless!" she answered. "Nobody would believe me. Consider
the situation. YOU know the needle I gave you was the one
Sebastian meant to use--the one he dropped and I caught--BECAUSE
you are a friend of mine, and because you have learned to trust me.
But who else would credit it? I have only my word against his--an
unknown nurse's against the great Professor's. Everybody would say
I was malicious or hysterical. Hysteria is always an easy stone to
fling at an injured woman who asks for justice. They would declare
I had trumped up the case to forestall my dismissal. They would
set it down to spite. We can do nothing against him. Remember, on
his part, the utter absence of overt motive."
"And you mean to stop on here, in close attendance on a man who has
attempted your life?" I cried, really alarmed for her safety.
"I am not sure about that," she answered. "I must take time to
think. My presence at Nathaniel's was necessary to my Plan. The
Plan fails for the present. I have now to look round and
reconsider my position."
"But you are not safe here now," I urged, growing warm. "If
Sebastian really wishes to get rid of you, and is as unscrupulous
as you suppose, with his gigantic brain he can soon compass his
end. What he plans he executes. You ought not to remain within
the Professor's reach one hour longer."
"I have thought of that, too," she replied, with an almost
unearthly calm. "But there are difficulties either way. At any
rate, I am glad he did not succeed this time. For, to have killed
me now, would have frustrated my Plan"--she clasped her hands--"my
Plan is ten thousand times dearer than life to me!"
"Dear lady!" I cried, drawing a deep breath, "I implore you in this
strait, listen to what I urge. Why fight your battle alone? Why
refuse assistance? I have admired you so long--I am so eager to
help you. If only you will allow me to call you--"
Her eyes brightened and softened. Her whole bosom heaved. I felt
in a flash she was not wholly indifferent to me. Strange tremors
in the air seemed to play about us. But she waved me aside once
more. "Don't press me," she said, in a very low voice. "Let me go
my own way. It is hard enough already, this task I have undertaken,
without YOUR making it harder. . . . Dear friend, dear friend, you
don't quite understand. There are TWO men at Nathaniel's whom I
desire to escape--because they both alike stand in the way of my
Purpose." She took my hands in hers. "Each in a different way,"
she murmured once more. "But each I must avoid. One is Sebastian.
The other--" she let my hand drop again, and broke off suddenly.
"Dear Hubert," she cried, with a catch, "I cannot help it: forgive
me!"
It was the first time she had ever called me by my Christian name.
The mere sound of the word made me unspeakably happy.
Yet she waved me away. "Must I go?" I asked, quivering.
"Yes, yes: you must go. I cannot stand it. I must think this
thing out, undisturbed. It is a very great crisis."
That afternoon and evening, by some unhappy chance, I was fully
engaged in work at the hospital. Late at night a letter arrived
for me. I glanced at it in dismay. It bore the Basingstoke
postmark. But, to my alarm and surprise, it was in Hilda's hand.
What could this change portend? I opened it, all tremulous.
"DEAR HUBERT,--" I gave a sigh of relief. It was no longer "Dear
Dr. Cumberledge" now, but "Hubert." That was something gained, at
any rate. I read on with a beating heart. What had Hilda to say
to me?
"DEAR HUBERT,--By the time this reaches you, I shall be far away,
irrevocably far, from London. With deep regret, with fierce
searchings of spirit, I have come to the conclusion that, for the
Purpose I have in view, it would be better for me at once to leave
Nathaniel's. Where I go, or what I mean to do, I do not wish to
tell you. Of your charity, I pray, refrain from asking me. I am
aware that your kindness and generosity deserve better recognition.
But, like Sebastian himself, I am the slave of my Purpose. I have
lived for it all these years, and it is still very dear to me. To
tell you my plans would interfere with that end. Do not, therefore,
suppose I am insensible to your goodness. . . . Dear Hubert, spare
me--I dare not say more, lest I say too much. I dare not trust
myself. But one thing I MUST say. I am flying from YOU quite as
much as from Sebastian. Flying from my own heart, quite as much as
from my enemy. Some day, perhaps, if I accomplish my object, I may
tell you all. Meanwhile, I can only beg of you of your kindness to
trust me. We shall not meet again, I fear, for years. But I shall
never forget you--you, the kind counsellor, who have half turned me
aside from my life's Purpose. One word more, and I should
falter.--In very great haste, and amid much disturbance, yours ever
affectionately and gratefully,
"HILDA."
It was a hurried scrawl in pencil, as if written in a train. I
felt utterly dejected. Was Hilda, then, leaving England?
Rousing myself after some minutes, I went straight to Sebastian's
rooms, and told him in brief terms that Nurse Wade had disappeared
at a moment's notice, and had sent a note to tell me so.
He looked up from his work, and scanned me hard, as was his wont.
"That is well," he said at last, his eyes glowing deep; "she was
getting too great a hold on you, that young woman!"
"She retains that hold upon me, sir," I answered curtly.
"You are making a grave mistake in life, my dear Cumberledge," he
went on, in his old genial tone, which I had almost forgotten.
"Before you go further, and entangle yourself more deeply, I think
it is only right that I should undeceive you as to this girl's true
position. She is passing under a false name, and she comes of a
tainted stock. . . . Nurse Wade, as she chooses to call herself,
is a daughter of the notorious murderer, Yorke-Bannerman."
My mind leapt back to the incident of the broken basin. Yorke-
Bannerman's name had profoundly moved her. Then I thought of
Hilda's face. Murderers, I said to myself, do not beget such
daughters as that. Not even accidental murderers, like my poor
friend Le Geyt. I saw at once the prima facie evidence was
strongly against her. But I had faith in her still. I drew myself
up firmly, and stared him back full in the face. "I do not believe
it," I answered, shortly.
"You do not believe it? I tell you it is so. The girl herself as
good as acknowledged it to me."
I spoke slowly and distinctly. "Dr. Sebastian," I said, confronting
him, "let us be quite clear with one another. I have found you out.
I know how you tried to poison that lady. To poison her with
bacilli which _I_ detected. I cannot trust your word; I cannot
trust your inferences. Either she is not Yorke-Bannerman's daughter
at all, or else . . . Yorke-Bannerman was NOT a murderer. . . ." I
watched his face closely. Conviction leaped upon me. "And someone
else was," I went on. "I might put a name to him."
With a stern white face, he rose and opened the door. He pointed
to it slowly. "This hospital is not big enough for you and me
abreast," he said, with cold politeness. "One or other of us must
go. Which, I leave to your good sense to determine."
Even at that moment of detection and disgrace, in one man's eyes,
at least, Sebastian retained his full measure of dignity.
