I commented: "It seems he had equipped himself well for the pursuit of the animal, whether ape or rodent. Did he ever find it?"
"He did. The facts are in the letters."
"And the disease organism, Holmes, upon which all this investigative effort was to center? I do not believe Miss Tarlton told us that."
"She had informed me of that detail in an earlier communication. It was Pasteurella pestis, Watson. Plague."
Chapter Three
Sally could not hear the four-wheeler approaching two streets away, but when it arrived, with a clash of iron wheelrims against the curb, she heard and jumped up from her chair. It was as if those who controlled her life and the prisoner's had already detected her in the betrayal that she had dared to dream about for one dread, glorious moment. Then the sudden terror faded from her eyes, to be replaced by a mixture of relief and agonized sympathy for the old man. But without another word to him she gathered her things and fled the room, pausing at the door to cast back a piteous glance that seemed to beg for his forgiveness.
Bah.
Spent by his long, fruitless efforts at seduction, and enervated by the return of daylight, the old man endured his ceaselessly throbbing head and listened. Several rooms away, the cultured voice of the doctor, newly arrived, was probing at Sally, who gave him hasty, fearful answers. The prisoner could hear the tones though not the words of both their voices. He heard also faint morning stirrings from his two fellow prisoners in their nearby rooms. Presently Sally's feet went rapidly downstairs. A street door opened and shut behind her; the sound of her steps on the pavement dwindled and disappeared.
Soon afterward the doctor began on his brief morning rounds. He came to the old man's room freshly redolent of carbolic acid, and this time wearing a surgeon's gown, which in that year was as much of an innovation as the mask.
"Well, sir, I perceive that you are unequivocally awake this morning, which we must count as progress, I suppose." As he offered this dubious greeting, the doctor's machine-like hands, today in fine rubber gloves, were palming the victim's forehead in search of fever that was not there, palpating the gaunt abdomen, turning back an eyelid.
Not far behind the doctor came the harsh clop of the hard woman's boots. Her face, like his covered up to the eyes in gauze, looked round his gowned shoulder. "Any signs yet?" she inquired.
"No. But the incubation period may be as long as ten days, remember."
"Veil then, hardly to be expected yet."
The old man let his gaze drift vacantly away from the two faces, then brought it back to focus on them as if with a great effort.
The two exchanged a few more words, then began to strip their victim, cutting away his expensive clothing ruthlessly, dropping it into a cloth bag. Only now, after he had been their captive for so long, were his pockets searched and his papers examined, by two gauzed heads posed briefly side by side.
"If the name's Corday," the woman offered, "the nationality is likely French."
"I suppose so. He took ship at Marseilles, I see." Not that it really mattered to them; they were satisfying a passing curiosity. Then they garbed the old man in a kind of hospital shirt or gown of tight-woven fabric, fastening the sleeves upon his arms with small cloth ties.
Corday, he thought. Marseilles. The words meant something personal to the old man. Or at least he felt they should have done. The name of the city brought up a hazy recollection of its skyline as seen from the Vieux Port. But Corday was not the old man's true name, of that much he was certain; nor was French his native tongue, though he could speak it fairly well.
A stethoscope had appeared. The old man was enjoined—in awkward French, this time—to breathe more deeply. He obediently made the front of his rib cage move up and down.
The doctor spoke in English, half amused, half puzzled. "Monsieur Corday, your respiration's very shallow, almost undetectable. Heartbeat is strong, but—" He shook his head, mystified. He felt the old man in the armpits and in the groin. Then he said to the woman: "I must take a blood sample."
"Ve must not spend too much time on this particular case. There are others to be tested. Results will be required of us, not specimens and theories."
"A blood sample is necessary, in my opinion. We cannot produce good results without knowledge."
The woman turned silently away. She was back shortly with a glass syringe that gleamed with sharpness.
Two attempts upon the inner elbow of the old man's right arm, where one vein stood up prominently, brought about a broken steel needle and some upper-class profanity. A new needle was obtained and the assault renewed. At last a trickle of red crawled into a glass tube. Meanwhile familiar heavy feet had been climbing the stair from the outside world. Their owner, masked but not gowned, came upon the scene just in time to witness this small success.
"Ah, you're back," the doctor welcomed Rough-voice. "What luck?"
"On'y indifferent, Guv'nor. Which is to say Barley ain't got quite the numbers nor the quality we wants, as yet. But 'e 'as 'opes. Wot's up 'ere?"
"Hopes, has he? Our time is not unlimited. The twenty-second of June draws near. Well, we shall discuss that presently. Have you slept?"
"Ar." The workmen stretched his powerful frame, arms over head. "Could do wi' a cuppa tea and bit o' scrag, though."
"Well, before you breakfast, do have another word with the girl. I believe things went well enough here through the night, but best make sure. She seemed rather to have the wind up when we came in this morning."
"Ar."
Small glass-tubed sample of gore in hand, the doctor led the others from the room, meanwhile continuing their conversation. "And try to feed this one again when you get back; she said he took nothing but water. We want to maintain some strength in him to obtain a valid result. But mind you don't touch him, or his bed."
"Wotcher think, I'm goin' ter do that?" The door closed and they were gone.
In a few minutes the doctor was back, a fresh hypodermic in hand. Above his mask he scowled at the old man as if insulted by him, and stabbed at him for more blood. The doctor did not believe what his microscope had just informed him regarding the first sample.
Another needle splintered, a circumstance that the physician dismissed with no more than an impatient oath. No giant of research, he, to pounce upon this apparently small but truly significant phenomenon. Of course it might be claimed in his defense that he labored amid dangers and distractions notably absent from the ordinary laboratory. And there was no room in his thoughts for any truly great discovery, for they were fully occupied with the preparation of an equally great crime.
A new needle was made to work, after a fashion. Following this second tapping of his veins, the old man may have fainted for a time. His weariness had grown steadily more insupportable; for him a bed of nails would have been as easy to rest on as that cart.
From its wide summer arc the June sun lanced at the great city, striking through a worn blanket of clouds not yet changed from the night before. Pain in the head, and growing weariness, and—becoming gradually distinct from these—a most—disquieting sense of something wrong. Intrinsically wrong with his existence, in the sense of something missing or crippled. As if an arm or leg were paralyzed, though that was not the case. He suffered a lack of powers that should have been his to call upon; and this lack was linked somehow with his want of a true name.