. . . Scissors, towels, a kind of syringe . . .
If there was the slightest doubt, one ought to draw attention to it and have the specimens tested again. But perhaps either of their bloods would have done equally well; in that case, the doctor would naturally give the preference to John Scales, rather than to poor Walter, shivering there like a leaf. Clump with II, clear with III; clump with III, clear with II – he couldn’t remember which way it went . . .
‘No, I’m sorry,’ repeated the doctor. He escorted Walter firmly to the door and came back. ‘Poor chap – he can’t make out why his blood won’t do. Hopeless, of course. Just as well give the man prussic acid at once.’
. . . The pink rose . . .
‘Doctor –’ began Scales.
And then, suddenly, Drury’s voice came from behind the screen, speaking the line that had been written to be spoken with a harsh and ugly cynicism, but giving it as he had given it now on the stage for nearly a hundred performances:
‘All right, all right, don’t worry – I’ll rest on my laurels.’
The hated, heartbreaking voice – the professional actor’s voice – sweet as sugar plums – liquid and mellow like an intoxicated flute.
Damn him! thought Scales, feeling the rubber band tighten above his elbow, I hope he dies. Never to hear that damned-awful voice again. I’d give anything. I’d give . . .
He watched his arm swell and mottle red and blue under the pressure of the band. The doctor gave him an injection of something. Scales said nothing. He was thinking:
Give anything. I would give my life. I would give my blood. I have
only
to give my blood – and say nothing. The plate
was
turned round . . . No, I don’t know that. It’s the doctor’s business to make sure . . . I can’t speak now . . . He’ll wonder why I didn’t speak before . . . Author sacrifices blood to save benefactor . . . Roses to right of him, roses to left of him . . . roses, roses all the way . . . I will rest on my laurels.
The needle now – plump into the vein. His own blood flowing, rising in the glass flask . . . Somebody bringing a bowl of warm water with a faint steam rising off it . . .
. . . His life for his friend . . . right as rain in an hour or two . . . blood-brothers . . . the blood is the life . . . as well give him prussic acid at once . . . to poison a man with one’s own blood . . . new idea, for a murder . . . MURDER . . .
‘Don’t jerk about,’ said the doctor.
. . . and what a motive! . . . murder to save one’s artistic soul . . . Who’d believe that? . . . and losing money by it . . . your money or your life . . . his life for his friend . . . his friend for his life . . . life or death, and not to know which one was giving . . . not
really
know . . . not know at all,
really
. . . too late now . . . absurd to say anything now . . . nobody
saw
the plate turned round . . . and who would ever imagine. . . ?
‘That’ll do,’ said the doctor. He loosened the rubber band, dabbed a pad of wool over the puncture and pulled out the needle, all, it seemed to Scales, in one movement. He plopped the flask into a little stand over the bowl of water and dressed the arm with iodine. ‘How do you feel? A trifle faint? Go and lie down in the other room for a minute or two.’
Scales opened his mouth to speak, and was suddenly assailed by a queer, sick qualm. He plunged for the door. As he went, he saw the doctor carry the flask behind the screen.
Damn that reporter! He was still hanging round. Meat and drink to the papers, this kind of thing. Heroic sacrifice by grateful author. Good story. Better story still if the heroic author were to catch him by the arm, pour into his ear the unbelievable truth – were to say, ‘I hated him, I hated him, I tell you – I’ve poisoned him – my blood’s poison – serpent’s blood, dragon’s blood—’
And what would the doctor say? If this really had gone wrong, would he suspect? What
could he
suspect? He hadn’t seen the plate move. Nobody had. He might suspect himself of negligence, but he wouldn’t be likely to shout
that
from the housetops. And he
had
been negligent – pompous, fat, chattering fool. Why didn’t he mark the specimens earlier? Why didn’t he match-up the blood with Drury’s? Why did he need to chatter so much and explain things? Tell people how easy it was to murder a benefactor?
Scales wished he knew what was happening. Walter was hovering outside in the passage. Walter was jealous – he had looked on enviously, grudgingly, as Scales came stumbling in from the operation. If only Walter knew what Scales had been doing, he might well look . . . It occurred to Scales that he had played a shabby trick on Walter – cheated him – Walter, who had wanted so much to sacrifice his right, his true, his life-giving blood . . .
Twenty minutes . . . nearly half an hour . . . How soon would they know whether it was all right or all wrong? ‘As well give him prussic acid,’ the doctor had said. That suggested something pretty drastic. Prussic acid was quick – you died as if struck.
Scales got up, pushed Walter and the pressman aside and crossed the passage. In Drury’s room the screen had been pushed back. Scales, peeping through the door, could see Drury’s face, white and glistening with sweat. The doctor bent over the patient, holding his wrist. He looked distressed – almost alarmed. Suddenly he turned, caught sight of Scales and came over to him. He seemed to take minutes to cross the room.
‘I’m sorry,’ said the doctor. ‘I’m very much afraid – you did your best – we all did our best.’
‘No good?’ Scales whispered back. His tongue and palate were like sawdust.
‘One can never be certain with these things,’ said the doctor. ‘I’m very much afraid he’s going.’ He paused and his eyes were faintly puzzled. ‘So much haemorrhage,’ he muttered as though explaining the trouble to himself. ‘Shock – cardiac strain – excitable’ – and, in a worried voice – ‘he complained almost at once of pain in the back.’ He added, with more assurance: ‘It’s always a bit of a gamble, you see, when the operation is left so late – and sometimes there is a particular idiosyncrasy. I should have preferred a direct test; but it’s not satisfactory if the patient dies while you wait to make sure.’
With a wry smile he turned back to the couch, and Scales followed him. If Drury could have acted death as he was acting it now! . . . Scales could not rid himself of the notion that he
was
acting – that the shine upon the skin was grease-paint, and the rough, painful breathing, the stereotyped stage gasp. If truth could be so stagey, then the stage must be disconcertingly like truth.
Something sobbed at his elbow. Walter had crept into the room, and this time the doctor made way for him.
‘Oh, Mr Drury!’ said Walter.
Drury’s blue lips moved. He opened his eyes: the dilated pupils made them look black and enormous.
‘Where’s Brand?’
The doctor turned interrogatively to the other two men. ‘His son?’
‘His understudy,’ whispered Scales. Walter said, ‘He’ll be here in a minute, Mr Drury.’
‘They’re waiting,’ said Drury. He drew a difficult breath and spoke in his old voice:
‘Brand! Fetch Brand! The curtain must go up!’
Garrick Drury’s death was very ‘good theatre’.
Nobody, thought Scales, could ever know. He could never really know himself. Drury might have died, anyhow, of shock. Even if the blood had been right, he might have died. One couldn’t be certain, now, that the blood hadn’t been right; it might have been all imagination about the smudged pink rose. Or – one might be sure, deep in one’s own mind. But nobody could prove it. Or – could the doctor? There would have to be an inquest, of course. Would they make a post-mortem? Could they prove that the blood was wrong? If so, the doctor had his ready explanation – ‘particular idiosyncrasy’ and lack of time to make further test. He
must
give that explanation, or accuse himself of negligence.
Because nobody could prove that the plate had been moved. Walter and the doctor had not seen it – if they had, they would have spoken. Nor could it be proved that he, Scales, had seen it – he was not even certain himself, except in the hidden chambers of the heart. And he, who lost so much by Drury’s death – to suppose that he could have seen and not spoken was fantastic. There are things beyond the power even of a coroner to imagine or of a coroner’s jury to believe.
SUSPICION
As the atmosphere of the railway carriage thickened with tobacco-smoke, Mr Mummery became increasingly aware that his breakfast had not agreed with him.
There could have been nothing wrong with the breakfast itself. Brown bread, rich in vitamin-content, as advised by the
Morning Star
’s health expert; bacon fried to a delicious crispness; eggs just nicely set; coffee made as only Mrs Sutton knew how to make it. Mrs Sutton had been a real find, and that was something to be thankful for. For Ethel, since her nervous breakdown in the Summer, had really not been fit to wrestle with the untrained girls who had come and gone in tempestuous succession. It took very little to upset Ethel nowadays, poor child. Mr Mummery, trying hard to ignore his growing internal discomfort, hoped he was not in for an illness. Apart from the trouble it would cause at the office, it would worry Ethel terribly, and Mr Mummery would cheerfully have laid down his rather uninteresting little life to spare Ethel a moment’s uneasiness.
He slipped a digestive tablet into his mouth – he had taken lately to carrying a few tablets about with him – and opened his paper. There did not seem to be very much news. A question had been asked in the House about Government typewriters. The Prince of Wales had smilingly opened an all-British exhibition of foot-wear. A further split had occurred in the Liberal party. The police were still looking for the woman who was supposed to have poisoned a family in Lincoln. Two girls had been trapped in a burning factory. A film-star had obtained her fourth decree nisi.
At Paragon Station, Mr Mummery descended and took a tram. The internal discomfort was taking the form of a definite nausea. Happily he contrived to reach his office before the worst occurred. He was seated at his desk, pale but in control of himself, when his partner came breezing in.
‘’Morning, Mummery,’ said Mr Brookes in his loud tones, adding inevitably, ‘Cold enough for you?’
‘Quite,’ replied Mr Mummery. ‘Unpleasantly raw, in fact.’
‘Beastly, beastly,’ said Mr Brookes. ‘Your bulbs all in?’
‘Not quite all,’ confessed Mr Mummery. ‘As a matter of fact I haven’t been feeling—’
‘Pity,’ interrupted his partner. ‘Great pity. Ought to get ’em in early. Mine were in last week. My little place will be a picture in the Spring. For a town garden, that is. You’re lucky, living in the country. Find it better than Hull, I expect, eh? Though we get plenty of fresh air up in the Avenues. How’s the missus?’
‘Thank you, she’s very much better.’
‘Glad to hear that, very glad. Hope we shall have her about again this winter as usual. Can’t do without her in the Drama Society, you know. By jove! I shan’t forget her acting last year in
Romance
. She and young Welbeck positively brought the house down, didn’t they? The Welbecks were asking after her only yesterday.’
‘Thank you, yes. I hope she will soon be able to take up her social activities again. But the doctor says she mustn’t overdo it. No worry, he says – that’s the important thing. She is to go easy and not rush about or undertake too much.’
‘Quite right, quite right. Worry’s the devil and all. I cut out worrying years ago and look at me! Fit as a fiddle, for all I shan’t see fifty again.
You’re
not looking altogether the thing, by the way.’
‘A touch of dyspepsia,’ said Mr Mummery. ‘Nothing much. Chill on the liver, that’s what I put it down to.’
‘That’s what it is,’ said Mr Brookes, seizing his opportunity. ‘Is life worth living? It depends on the liver. Ha, ha! Well now, well now – we must do a spot of work, I suppose. Where’s that lease of Ferraby’s?’
Mr Mummery, who did not feel at his conversational best that morning, rather welcomed this suggestion, and for half an hour was allowed to proceed in peace with the duties of an estate agent. Presently, however, Mr Brookes burst into speech again.
‘By the way,’ he said abruptly, ‘I suppose your wife doesn’t know of a good cook, does she?’
‘Well, no,’ replied Mr Mummery. ‘They aren’t so easy to find nowadays. In fact, we’ve only just got suited ourselves. But why? Surely your old Cookie isn’t leaving you?’
‘Good Lord, no!’ Mr Brookes laughed heartily. ‘It would take an earthquake to shake off old Cookie! No. It’s for the Philipsons. Their girl’s getting married. That’s the worst of girls. I said to Philipson, “You mind what you’re doing,” I said. “Get somebody you know something about, or you may find yourself landed with this poisoning woman – what’s her name – Andrews. Don’t want to be sending wreaths to your funeral yet awhile,” I said. He laughed, but it’s no laughing matter and so I told him. What we pay the police for I simply don’t know. Nearly a month now, and they can’t seem to lay hands on the woman. All they say is, they think she’s hanging about the neighbourhood and “may seek situation as cook.” As cook! Now I ask you!’