“One of Carew’s subordinates?” asked Messenger only mildly interested.
“Subordinate?” echoed Kildare. “If you piled ten Carews and ten hospitals one on top of the other you wouldn’t have what Gillespie means. And he’ll raise the devil with me for being off duty.”
He tossed off the pyjamas and started reaching for his clothes.
“I don’t understand this,” said Messenger. “No matter what the hospital may be, it performs certain services for certain considerations. I’ll give them such considerations in return for your time that everyone will be happy. Let me do the worrying about that, please!”
Kildare was jamming himself into his clothes. He panted out the words: “Can’t you understand? Gillespie—but you’ve never heard of him?”
Messenger said, a little sternly because he felt that too much time was being given to a mere detaiclass="underline" “Whatever Doctor Gillespie may be, he is a man who serves society and receives compensation for his services. That is axiomatic in the life of every man except saints, and saints are a little out of date, aren’t they?”
As he thought of how completely all axioms were worthless in a definition of Gillespie, Kildare made a gesture of surrender. He said: “Gillespie never took a penny in his life. He’d rather give the world one specific cure than have a whole mountain of gold.”
Kildare was sitting down now rapidly lacing his shoes. Messenger had lost some of his surety.
“I almost take it that you’d walk out of this case if Gillespie whistled you back,” he suggested.
Kildare, whipping on a necktie and knotting it, answered: “He’s the master, and I’m the apprentice. Of course I come when he whistles.”
“Do I take it that you look forward with pleasant expectation to a penniless life like his?” asked Messenger.
“If I could steal a quarter of what he knows, what would money mean?” demanded Kildare, astonished in his turn.
He brushed his fingers through his hair and brought it into rough order. Without a glance at a mirror to check details he was ready to go. For an instant they stared at one another across a distance immeasurably great. Messenger, stricken by the new idea, said suddenly: “If I can’t buy help from you people, can I beg it? That seems the only thing to do!”
“I’ll tell you what I know, what I guess, and what I advise you to do,” said Kildare, pulling a thick wad of money from his pocket. “By the way, here’s what’s left of what you gave me last night.”
“Damn the money,” snapped Messenger. “In your world, it seems that damning is all that money’s good for. Keep the change, will you? What I gave you was nothing.”
“Interns can’t accept pay,” answered Kildare a little impatiently.
The reluctant hand of Messenger accepted the bills.
Kildare went on: “Nancy is the victim of an acute hysteria that takes its form in fear of the night and of being alone. That’s what I know definitely. There is something in her mind so horrible that she can’t think or speak about it. That’s all I know. My guess is that the source of her fear is not in you or Herron. She leaves the house to avoid loneliness. Her dread, I think, is of something in the future. What I advise is that you get the finest psychiatrist and let him work out the problem. In the meantime, let her have her way in everything and be as patient as you can.”
“Kildare, if you knew Nancy better you would understand that she’ll never submit to a doctor’s care.”
“It’s a difficulty,” agreed Kildare. “But a psychiatrist could be introduced as a friend in the house, as I was.”
“He would be someone of name and established reputation. If Nancy didn’t recognise him, one of her friends would be sure to. Great scientists are not great actors. Besides, the touch of a middle-aged practitioner would be too heavy and clumsy, probably. She’s built a wall that shuts out the rest of the world. By the grace of God and your own devices you’ve managed to get inside that wall. I’m afraid that nobody else on earth can do that, and now you tell me that you’re leaving us in the lurch!”
Kildare thought back to the staring eyes of Nancy. He had to take a great breath to maintain his resolute purpose.
“I’m sorry about her,” he said, “but I can’t stay.” The face of Messenger glistened with a fine perspiration. He kept a hard hold on himself.
“Let me ask another question,” he said. “Kildare, don’t you feel that with a bit of time you might be able to get at the root of her trouble?”
“I feel that I might, with luck.”
“And don’t you feel that there’s need for haste?”
Kildare was silent.
“I mean,” went on Messenger, “won’t you agree that in her present state of mind she easily might become desparate?”
“Yes,” said Kildare reluctantly.
“And if she becomes desperate, she would be capable of almost any action?”
“Yes,” said Kildare.
A silence grew up in the room like a field of high electric tension.
At last Kildare said: “Doctor Gillespie is working now at an experiment that may save thousands of lives. He needs me. I can’t imagine anything in the world that would induce him to let me go.”
“Nevertheless,” said Messenger, “I’ll see what can be done to provide the inducement.”
He went out of the room with Kildare and down the stairs beside him. When they came to the front door, they shook hands.
“I know part of the hard thoughts you’re thinking,” said Kildare. “And if it weren’t that I’m bound to Gillespie, I’d give anything I know to help Nancy. She means a lot to me.”
“I believe you,” said Messenger solemnly. “I have no hard thoughts. Every man has his own conception of his duty to others and to himself, but I feel that I shall have you back here on her case before another day has come round.”
Out on the street Kildare found a gusty wind and rain that iced the pavement, but it seemed pleasant weather compared with the unhappiness which he had left behind him. From the corner he looked back at the succession of dignified façades standing shoulder to shoulder with insuperable dignity, each as like the other as so many tall brothers. He turned from them hastily, for the thought of Nancy Messenger came suddenly like a sweet ghost and let the cold of the morning breathe into him.
CHAPTER NINE
WHEN he got to the hospital, he raced to his room and hurried into whites. The brazen voice of the loudspeaker was roaring, before he had laced his shoes: “Calling Doctor Kildare; report at Doctor Carew’s office. Calling Doctor Kildare; report at Doctor Carew’s office. Calling Doctor Kildare…”
He was out in the corridor with the third repetition still resounding in the room behind him and went at once to the head of the hospital. Carew, biting off the end of a cigar, recognised him with a grunt and a nod as though he were a very distasteful sight. The superintendent, instead of addressing Kildare, preferred to give his attention to the grey mist beyond the windows through which the towers of Manhattan were lifting to an unhappy height.
“I’ve just had two or three million dollars on the telephone,” he said, letting the smoke issue with his speaking breath and so curl up into his grim face. “Two or three million hospital dollars; enough to bring this old institution to life; enough to put hundreds of new beds into the service of the poor…I suppose you know what I’m talking about?”
“Mr. Messenger?” suggested Kildare.
“Well,” said Carew, “I don’t expect the future of the hospital to mean much to you, but I wonder if you’ve thought clearly of all this from your own personal angle? You know that a doctor with clients like the Messengers is bound to get all that money can buy?”