by Max Brand
"And give up the work with Doctor Gillespie?"
"And what does that mean? He says you have talent. Very well. And he's willing to teach you. Very well. But the finest memory in the world and the best teaching may not make you another Gillespie..."
"I'm not fool enough to hope to be another Gillespie," said Kildare.
"You hope to be at least half of him. Is that enough for you? Well, it's your own business," snapped Carew. "Glory is more than gold, eh? Mind you, I wouldn't usually tempt you away from the strait and narrow...But I've already wasted too much time on a hopeless case. Good day, my very young friend."
So, with a great door closed upon opportunity, Kildare hurried down to the familiar offices of Gillespie. He found Nurse Cavendish putting things in order while the sea-lion roar of Gillespie resounded vaguely from the adjoining room.
"Are things bad, Molly?" he asked.
"How can they ever be good with him when you stay away and let him work all night?" demanded the Cavendish savagely. "How can they ever be good when there's only a small bit of life left to him and he pours it out like water on you?"
"On me?" echoed Kildare.
"What else is he doing but giving half of his time and strength to the teaching of you?" exclaimed Molly Cavendish.
"It's true," agreed Kildare. The nature of that truth took the breath suddenly and cruelly out of him. "He's wasting himself on me—and on the experiment."
"Damn the experiment," said Molly. "He'd never have grown curious about the meningitis in the first place except you began asking questions that excited him. What would a young man do but make an old man ambitious, anyway?" She concluded in a growl: "It was a sad day...It was a sad day for him when he met..."
She did not need to complete the gloomy sentence; Kildare understood the implication perfectly. For that matter, it was not the first time that Molly had showed her ugly temper to him and he had forgiven her because of that deathless devotion which she had offered, for so many years, to the great Gillespie. The rest of the world praised him, but only the Cavendish served him night or day.
"Didn't he sleep last night?" asked Kildare.
"How would he sleep," cried Molly, "when things began to go wrong with the damned white mice, and you weren't here to help with them? There's no one else whose hands he trusts, and you know it. How would he have a chance when you go off gadding and leave the poor man alone?"
Kildare slowly turned the knob of the inner door and pushed it open in time to hear Gillespie shout: "Not file 117D; file 117T is what I want, if you'll open your ears and try to hear what I say to you!"
Mary Lamont, on her knees beside a great drawer jammed full of cards five by eight which contained the complicated records of the experiment, flashed up at Kildare a wild look from a haggard face. If there had been no sleep for Gillespie, it was plain that there had been none for her.
Gillespie was roaring: "Hurry, hurry! It's passing the time now for the new injection and how in God's name can we vary the compound if the record of the old one isn't at hand?"
"It's here in the drawer," said Kildare, pulling one open. "These cards don't go into the files."
He had it out.
"Ah, it's you, at last, is it?" cried Gillespie. "Give me the card. Isn't it almost time for the injection, Jimmy?"
The weariness of the old man was so great that his head wavered a little from side to side as he spoke. He was trying to keep up his strength with the heat of his own temper and having a bad time of it. An ugly blue tint was in his face. His lips were a dull purple. Kildare's frightened eye took heed of these details.
"It's not time for the injection," said Kildare. "The time has gone by. It's three hours too late. I warned you before I left, sir."
"Did you? Did you warn me about them?" said Gillespie, his head falling back against the top of the wheel chair and his eyes closing. "This infernal brain of mine is full of fuzz and won't work...How long will it take us to bring another batch of them around to the same point?"
"Four days, sir," said Kildare.
"Four days? Four days lost?" echoed Gillespie. "Then let's get at it at once—but my God, the pity of it, Jimmy! Why weren't you here with me, boy?...Four beautiful days lost..."
He had not opened his eyes as he spoke, and now his head fell suddenly over toward his shoulder. Kildare did not have to pause to take a pulse or make the slightest further examination. He knew every detail of that rugged face with such a perfect intimacy that the slightest alteration was diagnostic to him.
He called to Mary for adrenalin and pushed the wheel chair into the next room toward the couch. Molly Cavendish hurried to Gillespie in silence. She did not need explanations or orders. Her eyes were deadly with hatred and accusation as she looked from her great master to Kildare. Then she was gathering up the loose body at the knees while Kildare lifted the torso. They laid him flat on the couch. Every moment the blue shadow deepened in his face as the life drained away. No one spoke. The nurses, with a windy whispering of their skirts, moved about him to anticipate his orders. Molly brought the alcohol to cleanse a spot for the needle; Mary Lamont offered the hypodermic syringe.
Kildare made the injection. Then with his eyes on the face of Gillespie and his finger on the pulse, he waited, counting the weak, shallow inhalations of breath and the senseless flutter of the heartbeat. Mary Lamont had opened the window. The entering wind caught at a loose paper on the desk so that it started rattling with the vibration of a snare-drum in the distance. A second injection was prepared in the syringe, but Kildare reserved it. Life was as dim in Gillespie as a fish motionless against a muddy stream.
Over the rattling of the paper on the desk he heard Mary Lamont whisper: "Will he live, Molly? He'sgot to live!"
The more audible murmur of the older nurse answered: "It don't matter. The leech that sucks the life out of him will still be working."
"Hush, Molly!"
"He'll be as hushed as a stone before many days." The whispers died out, but the words kept on living in Kildare. He resaw the story of his days with Gillespie, and the truth of Molly's accusation yawned at him like a cannon's mouth. It was he who drew out the strength from Gillespie—he and the experiment.
The blue in Gillespie's face was altering now to grey. A vague flush of life commenced to shine again faintly, like dawn through a heavy fog. The respirations grew deeper; some order came into the riot of the heart. Kildare held the cold, bony hand of the old man, and in that quiet moment as he waited he made his resolution. It meant so much that the spirit sickened in him, as though part of his life were passing from his body back into that of Gillespie.
"Four days..." said Gillespie, without opening his eyes. "We'll make them up," answered Kildare.
"We've got to hurry," said Gillespie. "We're behind...Jimmy—take care—everything." A moment later his grey lips parted in deeper breathing as he slept. Kildare, with a stethoscope, listened for a long time to the fluctuating, uncertain heartbeat, a foolish engine for a ship of such importance.
He stood up and found one leg numb from kneeling so long beside the couch. Mary Lamont smiled at him as though he had brought back the dead to life, but old Molly Cavendish scowled down at the sleeper and gave Kildare not a single glance. The Cavendish was right. Now he kept asking himself if Gillespie would attempt to carry on the experiment single-handed if Kildare left him, or if he would abandon the whole enterprise.
He had to be alone to think things out, so he went back to his room, but found Collins sprawling there as usual. He turned to go out again.
"Wait a minute," called Collins.
Wearily Kildare faced him.
"What's wrong?" asked Collins. "Who's got a knife in you now?"
"Shut up, Tom," said Kildare. "Everything is all right."
"Not by the look of you. You take everything the hard way. Want to be alone here?"
"It doesn't matter," said Kildare. "I keep hoping that I haven't made up my mind, but I suppose I have."
&nb
sp; "Made up your mind to what? You need a transfusion," said Collins. "You need a shot of happy blood without so many red corpuscles in it. Why not do things the easy way for once in your life?"
"The easy way?" said Kildare. "That's right. That's what I'm going to do—right now." He managed to laugh a little.
"You sound like the ghost in 'Hamlet,'" stated Collins. "Tell me what's wrong."
But Kildare was gone. He went up to Carew and was able to see him at once.
"I've changed my mind," said Kildare. "I'll take the Messenger case."
Carew, to his surprise, showed more curiosity than pleasure.
"Not because I tempted you, I hope. You've got permission from Gillespie to take time off?" he asked. "No," said Kildare.
"You realise that it may mean a complete break between you and the great man?"
"I realise that."
Carew, pursing his lips, looked into his own thoughts "I suppose I understand," he said. "You got a taste of comfort and soft living in the Messenger house and after that the hospital regime looked as long and dry as a desert. And yet you know, Kildare, that there is always that long chance—Gillespiemight make a great man of you. You're going to risk that?"
"It seems that I am," answered Kildare dryly.
"Ah!" murmured Carew. "Well, Gillespie's hope about you goes where most dreams go—into the garbage can or out the window into the gutter...I'll get in touch with Messenger at once. He'll be very pleased, I dare say...And after all, this may turn out to be a great thing for the hospital—a great thing for your own future. I'm almost glad that you've turned out to be a practical fellow, Kildare."
He picked up the telephone as he spoke, turning his head quickly away. Even Carew despised him for his decision. And when the news of it went abroad, what would the others say who had watched with envy and astonishment as Kildare climbed by the hard, straight road toward the top of the medical ladder? But facing them was nothing compared with telling Gillespie.
Half an hour later he was bewildered to find that the old man was already back in his wheel chair, intent upon the entangled problems of his experiment, shouting orders once more at Mary Lamont. "Can't I turn my back, can't I blink my eyes and lie down for a moment without having you slip out of my sight?" he exclaimed when he saw Kildare. "Lamont, get some more Petri dishes and put the agar in them."
"I'd like to speak to you alone for a moment," said Kildare.
"Don't be secretive, Jimmy," advised Gillespie. "There's mighty little reason for whispering in this world, and when you get to my age you'll understand it...But go on and leave us alone, Lamont."
She already was out of the room.
"If you're going to talk about the little dizzy spell I had," said Gillespie, "I won't hear a word of it."
"It's not that. It's other things that will go wrong with you," replied Kildare. "You've only a certain amount of strength, and it can't be replenished in you as it can in younger people."
Gillespie made a brutally terse summing-up. He said: "I'll do the addition for you. I'm old. There's a melanoma eating my body away. I have only a few months to live. And I ought to conserve the oil in the lamp so that it will cast a light as long as possible. Right?"
"That's my idea, sir," agreed Kildare.
"You're wrong then," exclaimed Gillespie. "If there's something worth burning for, let all the oil be consumed to make one big flash. It might be a signal that will be seen across a whole ocean of time. If you look back through the centuries, Jimmy, you can't see the little dim souls that keep falling into oblivion like leaves from trees. You see only the creatures that burned as they lived; you see them by their own light, and time can't exhaust it. It's like the difference between peace and war. In peacetime little happens. In war the trained soldier goes out with his life in his hand and throws it away like a gambling fool. One in a million receives glory in exchange. And we're soldiers in a war, Jimmy. The enemy is ignorance. Ignorance is the dark. And any man who can throw a light is a fool if he's not willing to die to do it. So we're going to rush on with the experiment. What if I pass out while I'm working? The great attempt is nine-tenths of accomplishment. And if I'm a bit reckless with the little I have left to spend, why, I always have that young Dr. Kildare to complete what I've started."
He laughed aloud and struck his hands together.
"They can beat us one by one, Jimmy, but they can't beat us when we hold fast together."
The thing had to be said, and Kildare said it slowly. The words had a strange taste in his throat.
"The point is that I won't be here—at least for a time. I've told Doctor Carew that he can assign me out on the Messenger case..."
"You've told him what? You've told him what?" shouted Gillespie. "What sort of infernal nonsense is this anyway? You know perfectly well that I can't have you assigned out when we're in the middle of the experiment. I'd as soon have no assistant at all as a will-o'-the-wisp who's here today and gone tomorrow and never to be counted on!"
"I'm sorry," answered Kildare.
"To the devil with your sorrow!" cried Gillespie. His voice changed to a quieter tone that took the breath out of Kildare. "It's not possible that you're thinking of walking out on me!"
Kildare looked away from his old preceptor and through the window toward the rain that slanted down in a fine sweep of brilliance borrowed from the shining west. In comparison, the interior of the office was lost in a twilight. So are all our hours and our days until some touch of genius lights them. He remembered what Gillespie had said of the dim souls who are lost by millions in the fog of time. He would be one of them, no doubt, if he lost his opportunity of borrowing light from this great man.
But he found himself repeating the lesson of Carew: "It seems to me that a man ought to have a chance to live—I mean, I'd like to get some taste out of life before I'm an old man."
"I don't believe it!" exclaimed Gillespie.
"It's true," lied Kildare. "From the time I was a small youngster, I've had a tough time of it. Now I see my way clear to get into the long green and I want some of it."
"Are you drunk?" demanded Gillespie harshly.
"No, sir. I'm simply seeing some of the realities. I'm just a little tired of the life I've been leading."
"Am I a fool?" barked Gillespie.
"Certainly not, sir."
"Did I pick you out as my assistant?'
"Yes, sir."
"After twenty-five years of searching to find some brain that might be worth the teaching I could give it, did I select you from all the thousands?"
"It was a great honour," said Kildare.
"And now, after I've tried you and tested you and hammered you for flaws and tested you with acids and found you the true metal—after all these tests, do you dare to tell me that I'm wrong? Do you have the impertinence to suggest that I've taken, not a thoroughbred who loves the hard going, but a cold-blooded, common rascal who prefers to have his beer and beef like a swine at a trough?"
Kildare was silent. A weight he could not support was bending his head. He wanted to shout out suddenly that nothing but Gillespie's own good was a strong enough force to take him from the old man's side and their work, but he knew that this would merely be temporising. If it came to talk of such expedients, the clever Gillespie would be much too sharp for him. The break he was determined to make had to be accomplished with a knife-stroke, and the edge he used necessarily must be sharp.
"Around us in this room," said Gillespie, extending his hands with a certain nobility, as though he were picking up the sorrows of the world and accepting the burden, "there are the elements of a specific cure for which tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions of people eventually may thank James Kildare and Leonard Gillespie. They may owe their lives to us."
His voice changed wonderfully as he added: "Jimmy, Jimmy, I know that you're young, and I know that all youth is tempted. But in the pinches, lean on me, talk to me. I can help you through the hard times."
Ki
ldare could not lift his head. He could not speak. Gillespie said suddenly: "Then get out and stay out!"
Kildare got out, still dumb as a beast that has been kicked from a place where it is not wanted. Through a blur of pain he saw Mary Lamont looking at him with bewilderment and then with a queer alarm. A moment later the ring of Gillespie summoned her, and she went hastily in to the old man.
He lay far back in his chair with his head sunk on his chest.
He said at once, rather faintly: "Be easy. I'm not going to faint twice in one day. Damned indigestion and nothing else. You understand?"
"Yes, doctor."
"Come over here where I can see you with the light in your face. That's better. Lamont, you look like a pretty clean piece of goods to me. No lies and deceits in you, are there?"
She was silent. Her troubled eyes dwelt on him with infinitely gentle consideration.
"No lies and deceits even for the sake of that same young doctor for whom you keep your special look? Do you know what your special look is like, Lamont?"
"No, sir," she said. Then: "Will you lie down, doctor? Your colour is not very—very good."
"Isn't it? But I'm well enough, I'm so well that I could chew up tenpenny nails or drink molten lead. That's how well I am. I think it's very possible that I may have made a fool of myself about a person who's important to me. I may have wasted—not time—ah, that doesn't count!—but life, life, life! I may have wasted that. And to be a fool—to call yourself a fool—is to send yourself living into hell and to burn...Tell me, Lamont—do you love Kildare?"
"I think I do," she said.
"Are you such a child that you're not sure?"
"I'm not a child," she answered. "But I'm not sure."
"Because the blockhead, the blind man, keeps on treating you like a sister?"
She smiled for Gillespie again with enough pain in her eyes to keep him from pursuing the subject.
"However, if you love him, it means that you know him. He has opened his mind and his heart even without knowing it, if you love him. Tell me, then: Is it possible that our young Kildare, the fellow without fear, the man who hangs on to his purposes like a bulldog—is it possible that our young Kildare is a fellow who would give up the great chance of his life for the sake of money and an easy berth?"