“I’m not thinking of that,” said Kildare, “but if Doctor Gillespie could be persuaded to let me go for a short time, I think I could help Nancy Messenger.”
“Bah!” said Carew. “He can’t be persuaded. I wouldn’t be fool enough to try persuasion. But you could make yourself a free agent, young Doctor Kildare.”
“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 growclass="underline" “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.