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 today to the risks of the poisoner.’
‘Fifteen years ago he used poison?’
She nodded, with th
e air of one who knows. ‘I am not speaking at random,’ she answered. ‘I say what I know. Someday 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 tomorrow.’
‘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. ‘Mus
t 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. Someday, 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,
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