Phillips turned slowly and stared at him. Jane Harden uttered a little stifled cry.
“What’s that, nurse?” asked Thoms. “Have you seen it? Here, give me the glove.”
“No, sir,” murmured Jane, “I haven’t seen it.”
“Jolly well acted it was, and someone had put them right about technical matters, but, of course, the situation was altogether too far-fetched. I’ll just go and see— ” He walked out, still talking, into the theatre, and after a minute or two called to the matron, who followed him.
“Jane,” said Phillips.
“Yes?”
“This — this is a queer business.”
“Nemesis, perhaps,” said Jane Harden.
“What do you mean?”
“Oh, nothing,” she said drearily. “Only it is rather like a Greek play, don’t you think? ‘Fate delivers our enemy into our hands.’ Mr. Thoms would think the situation very far-fetched.”
Phillips washed his hands slowly in a basin of sterilised water. “I knew nothing of this illness,” he said. “It’s the merest chance that I was here at this hour. I’d only just got in from St. Jude’s. I tried to get out of it, but his wife insisted. Evidently she has no idea we — quarrelled.”
“She could hardly know why you quarrelled, could she?”
“I’d give anything to be out of it — anything.”
“And I. How do you think I feel?”
He squeezed the water off his gloves and turned towards her, holding his hands out in front of him. He looked a grotesque and somehow pathetic figure.
“Jane,” he whispered, “won’t you change your mind? I love you so much.”
“No,” she said. “No I loathe him. I never want to see him again, but as long as he’s alive I can’t marry you.”
“I don’t understand you,” he said heavily.
“I don’t understand myself,” answered Jane, “so how should you?”
“I shall go on — I shall ask you again and again.”
“It’s no good. I suppose I’m queer, but as long as he’s there I–I’m in pawn.”
“It’s insane — after his treatment of you. He’s — he’s discarded you, Jane.”
She laughed harshly.
“Oh, yes. It’s quite according to Victorian tradition. I’m a ‘ruined girl,’ you know!”
“Well, stick to the Victorian tradition and let me make an honest woman of.you.”
“Look here,” said Jane suddenly, “I’ll try and be an honest woman with you. I mean I’ll try and explain what’s inexplicable and pretty humiliating. I told him I wanted to live my own life, experience everything, all that sort of chat. I deceived myself as well as him. In the back of my mind I knew I was simply a fool who had lost her head as well as her heart. Then, when it happened, I realised just how little it meant to him and just how much it meant to me. I knew I ought to keep up the game, shake hands and part friends, and all that. Well — I couldn’t. My pride wanted to, but — I couldn’t. It’s all too grimly commonplace. I ‘loved and hated’ him at the same time. I wanted to keep him, knew I hadn’t a chance, and longed to hurt him. I wrote to him and told him so. It’s a nightmare and it’s still going on. There! Don’t ask me to talk about it again. Leave me alone to get over it as best I may.”
“Couldn’t I help?”
“No. Someone’s coming — be careful.”
Thoms and Roberts returned and washed up. Roberts went away to give the anæsthetic. Phillips stood and watched his assistant.
“How did your play end?” he asked suddenly.
“What? Oh. Back to the conversation we first thought of. It ended in doubt. You were left to wonder if the patient died under the anæsthetic, or if the surgeon did him in. As a matter of fact, under the circumstances, no one could have found out. Are you thinking of trying it out on the Home Secretary, sir? I thought you were a pal of his?”
The mask over Phillips’s face creased as though he were smiling. “Given the circumstances,” he said, “I suppose it might be a temptation.”
He heard a movement behind him and turned to see Nurse Banks regarding him fixedly from the door into the theatre. Sister Marigold appeared behind her, said: “If you please, nurse,” in a frigid voice, and came through the door.
“Oh, matron,” said Phillips abruptly, “I have given an injection of hyoscine, as usual. If we find peritonitis, as I think we shall, I shall also inject serum.”
“I remembered the hyoscine, of course, Sir John. The stock solution had been put out, but I saw you had prepared your own injection.”
“Yes, we won’t need the stock solution. Always use my own tablets — like to be sure of the correct dosage. Are we all ready?”
He went into the theatre.
“Well,” said Sister Marigold, “I’m sure the stock solution is good enough for most people.”
“You can’t be too careful, matron,” Thoms assured her genially. “Hyoscine’s a ticklish drug, you know.”
The sickly reek of ether began to drift into the room.
“I must say I don’t quite understand why Sir John is so keen on giving hyoscine.”
“It saves anæsthetic and it has a soothing effect after the operation. I give it myself,” added Thoms importantly.
“What is the usual dose, sir?” asked Nurse Banks abruptly.
“From a hundredth to a two-hundredth of a grain, nurse.”
“As little as that!”
“Oh, yes. I can’t tell you the minimum lethal dose — varies with different cases. A quarter-grain would do anyone in.”
“A quarter of a grain,” said Nurse Banks thoughtfully. “Fancy!”
CHAPTER IV
Postoperative
Thursday, the eleventh. Late afternoon.
Sir John waited in the theatre for his patient.
The matron, Jane and Nurse Banks came in with Thoms. They stood near the table, a group of robed and expressionless automata. They were silent. The sound of wheels. A trolley appeared with Dr. Roberts and the special nurse walking behind it. Dr. Roberts held the anæsthetic mask over the patient’s face. On the trolley lay the figure of the Home Secretary. As they lifted it on the table the head spoke suddenly and inconsequently.
“Not to-day, not to-day, not to-day, damn the bloody thing,” it said very rapidly.
The special nurse went away.
The reek of ether rose up like incense round the table. Dr. Roberts wheeled forward his anæsthetising apparatus, an object that, with its cylinders of compressed gases carried in an iron framework, resembled a gigantic cruet. A low screen was fixed across the patient’s chest to shut off the anæsthetist. Thoms looked at the patient curiously.
“He’s a striking-looking chap, isn’t he?” he remarked lightly. “Curious head. What do you make of it, Roberts? You’re a bit of a dog at that sort of thing, aren’t you? Read your book the other day. There’s insanity somewhere in the racial makeup here, isn’t there? Wasn’t his old man bats?”
Roberts looked scandalised.
“That is so,” he said stiffly, “but one would hardly expect to find evidence of racial insanity clearly denned in the facial structure, Mr. Thoms.”
The sister arranged the sterile coverings over the abdomen. With the head screened, the patient was no longer an individual. A subject for operation lay on the table — that was all.
Sir John took up a scalpel and made the first incision.
“Peritonitis, all right,” said Thoms presently.
“Hull-lo!” he added a little later. “Ruptured abscess. He’s made a job of it.”