"Is he in isolation?"
"No."
"Dear old Louis!" said Jonathan. "He wouldn't recognize a case of smallpox if he saw it. Not that I think this is smallpox. Let's go down and see Jeff." He stood up.
"His mother is with him," said Robert.
Jonathan studied the younger doctor with amusement. "I see you've encountered Mrs. Holliday."
"Yes." Robert paused. "She is putting sulphur compresses on him. She's quite a manager, isn't she?"
"Very rich, too. Big benefactress of St. Hilda's. Inherited a lot of money from her unfortunate husband. If she wanted boiled onion compresses here, the nurses would be running with hot onion stew and flannels, and old Louis would-be beaming and saying, 'Yes, indeed, Elsie, yes, indeed, very efficacious.' Let's intrude."
"Should we?" asked Robert.
"We should indeed. At least, I will."
They went down to the third floor and to a large and lavish room. The patient, a man Jonathan's age, was sitting comfortably in a chair near the window, while his mother temporarily was desisting from the compresses and sitting opposite.
He was a handsome young man, with the broad and vigorous face of an outdoorsman, short and pugnacious of nose, generous of mouth, and lively of gray eye. His thick blond hair curled in damp ringlets over his big head. On seeing Jonathan, he shouted with pleasure. "Jon! You damned old hound, you! Couldn't get you, though I tried. Jon, it's good to see you again!" He held out his bronze hand to Jonathan and stood up. He was apparently bursting with health and vitality, and there was no illness apparent in him except for peculiar roundish and coppery patches on his cheeks and hands and throat, and his partially exposed chest.
The two young men embraced each other awkwardly, with blows on shoulder and arm, and obscenities. They shouted incoherently, in insulting terms, while the prim thin woman nearby, in her early fifties, averted her head and showed the tense white cheek of the born hysteric, and the trembling lower lip. Her hair was gray and untidy under a harsh black straw hat, and she wore the grim black clothing of one who will not defer to weather.
Jonathan, his arm about his exuberant friend, looked down at her. "How are you, Mrs. Holliday?" he asked.
She slowly and reluctantly turned her head to him and her cold light eyes studied him with contemptuous disfavor. "Very well, Doctor," she answered. Then she added, "Dr. Hedler is my son's physician and had him brought here last night. It's all nonsense, of course, but Dr. Hedler is so—conscientious. Unlike many other doctors I could name."
"Good," said Jonathan. Jefferson Holliday colored at the affront to his friend, but Jonathan squeezed his arm. "Probably nothing but one of those damned semitropical diseases, anyway."
"Disease?" Mrs. Holliday's voice became shrill and full of offense. "My son has no disease! What a thing to say." She agitatedly pulled at the gloves in her lap, black kid ones. "Nothing but a scruff. That's what I told Louis. I told him that, I kept telling him that—"
"No doubt," said Jonathan.
"Sulphur compresses, hot," said Mrs. Holliday. "Sulphur ointment." She looked up at her son. "I really think you should ask for discharge, Jefferson."
"I intend to." The young man beamed at Jonathan. "Sit down. Yes, I've met Dr. Morgan. He was kind enough to stop in to see me." He exuded buoyant well-being and immense cheerfulness. "I'm on six months' leave, Jon. You'd never guess! I'm going to be married."
"No!" said Jonathan. "What brings on that sad news?"
"Oh, now," said Jefferson, laughing. "The daughter of the head of my concern. You'd never guess. An anthropologist, by God! Mad about it. She was with me for some time down in South America. Those Inca ruins, you know. Studying the natives for signs of the old Incas. Thinks she has a clue. Lovely girl."
"I bet," said Jonathan, thinking of a hardy, striding woman in short skirts and boots, and with a loud harsh voice.
"You're wrong," said Jefferson. He reached to a nearby table—covered with vases of flowers—and took a small framed photograph from it, and held it out to Jonathan. Jonathan saw the picture of a gentle young girl with dark hair, a serious smiling face, soft lips and extraordinarily lovely wide eyes. Her white shirtwaist was open at the neck and showed a throat unusually delicate and slender, with a thin link of pearls about it. "Elizabeth Cochrane," said Jefferson with pride. "She has a quirk. She believes in reincarnation. She thinks she was an Inca princess once."
"That's a change," said Jonathan, studying the photograph. "Usually they think they were Cleopatra or at least Queen Elizabeth." The photograph impressed him. There was a vulnerable look to the girl, which uneasily reminded him of someone, but who that one was he could not immediately remember. "A nice girl," he said.
"Marvelous," said Jefferson, looking fondly at the photograph even when he had put it down. "After we are married, we'll give up all that exploring—at least after a year or so. My work is finished in South America. We've done as much as we can, but now it is up to the people, themselves. I haven't much hope. They lack American bustle and determination. What we value as enterprise they think is ridiculous."
"Sensible," said Jonathan. He was looking at the reddish patches on his friend's skin. "When did you get that affliction?"
"A year ago."
"Dr. Hedler is his doctor!" said Mrs. Holliday in a shrill voice and she moved spasmodically on her straight chair as if about to go into a fit. The hot room, in spite of the large opened windows, stank with the odor of sulphur ointment.
"Mama," said Jefferson.
"I don't care!" cried Mrs. Holliday. "I don't want him saying things—things—"
"Mama," said Jefferson.
"Never mind," said Jonathan. "I'm just curious. Mind if I look at it? Just academically, not as a physician."
Mrs. Holliday sprang to her feet like a wild young girl and plunged her thin black-clad body out of the room in a rush. "There she goes, after old Louis," said her son in a rueful tone. "Can she cause you trouble, Jon?"
"Not more than I already have," said Jonathan. "Bob, come over here. We'll look at this together."
The two doctors bent over the indulgently smiling patient and carefully examined the blotches. One of them was noticeably thickened, and there was a nodule in it. Jonathan pressed. Jefferson winced. "Hurt? How old is this patch?"
"It's a new one, in the place of the old, which disappeared."
Jonathan felt around the nodule and pressed the flesh. "Hurt?"
"No." The young man frowned. "In fact, I don't feel anything there."
Jonathan lifted the eyelids of Jefferson Holliday, stared at the membranes. He examined the nose and throat tissues. His normally darkish-pale face became sallow and tight. He shook his head. He glanced at Robert Morgan. "Well?" he asked.
"I can't diagnose it," said young Robert. "I never saw such a skin disease before. Did you?"
But Jonathan did not answer. A look of sickness settled about his mouth. Then he took out his pocketknife and gently and carefully scraped the surface of one patch, and noticed that the patient showed no signs of pain. He held out the blade to Robert. "Go to the laboratory, stain this, and look at it," he said. To Robert's surprise his hand was trembling a little. "The stain for tubercles."
"My God!" exclaimed Jefferson with great alarm, and pulled away to look up at the face of his friend. "You don't think I have tuberculosis of the skin, do you, for God's sake! Listen, I don't have a cough. I'm as hearty as a horse."
"No," said Jonathan, "I don't think you have tuberculosis of the skin." I wish, he thought, that was all you had, Jeff, I wish to God.
"Or cancer?" asked the patient, trying to smile.
"No. What gave you that idea?" Jonathan sat down and stared at the floor. "Under what conditions did you live in South America?"
"Conditions? Oh, sometimes crude and primitive. Most of the time. We had a camp, where Elizabeth and the others stayed except for occasional explorations. But I had to go often into the interiors, among the natives. Sometimes I slept in their hut
s, during the rains. Sometimes in the jungles with what cover we could cut. Machetes. Why? Do you think I have a parasite of some kind?"
"Maybe," said Jonathan. "Did you see anyone else with this kind of skin disfigurement?"
The young man frowned. "Yes, I did. Two or three. A child. A woman. An old man. In fact, I stayed in their hut during the rains for several weeks, before we could get out and back to the river. Why? Do I have something contagious?"
"Perhaps," said Jonathan. "Mildly so."
"My God! Elizabeth!" said Jefferson. His bronzed face paled. "Do I have something I could give her?"
"I wouldn't worry about that. You aren't married to her yet."
Now the young man darkly colored. "If you think I've picked up a venereal disease, it's possible, between you and . me. My God, I can't stand the idea! The woman in the hut —she was young and wasn't blotched then. After all, Jon, I'm a man—What's that arsenic thing they are using?"
"You're thinking of syphilis," said Jonathan. "I don't think you have it, though it's always been endemic among Indians. That's where the white man picked it up in the first place. Let's not worry until we know."
"What did you do to me with your pocketknife?"
"Took a sample of your skin cells."
A thick hard silence fell in the room. Jefferson was pale again. He kept glancing with dubious fear at his friend. He remembered the old stories of Jonathan Ferrier. A fanatic. Always looking for the worst. Everything complicated, nothing simple. One of those new scientists, finding trouble in the mildest things.
"Microscope?" said the young engineer, trying to control a strange tremor along his nerves. "Will it show anything?"
"I hope not." said Jonathan. He looked at the photograph of Elizabeth Cochrane again, and was again sickened.
The broad door swung open and Mrs. Holliday returned with white and vindictive triumph, bursting into the room before Louis Hedler. "Now!" she exclaimed. "Well stop all this nonsense!" She breathed loudly and victoriously and went to her son and put her hand on his shoulder. Dr. Hedler smiled widely and mechanically at Jonathan and said, "We're happy about Hortense, Jon. We owe it all to you, of course, and the skilled care she is getting. I talked with old Humphrey this morning— Well, never mind. We're all grateful, Jon, believe me. Never mind. What is this Elsie is telling me? Usurping my patient?" He continued to glow indulgently.
"No," said Jonathan. "No usurpation. Just curiosity."
"Curiosity!" said Mrs. Holliday. "Asking my son questions! It's unethical!"
Dr. Hedler put his hand tenderly on her visibly shaking arm. "Now, Elsie. Let's be calm. John is a very talented— yes, indeed—talented, physician, and Jeff is his friend, after all, and doctors do get curious, you know. Nothing wrong, my dear, nothing wrong. In fact, I'm pleased. Always like a new opinion." He glowed upon Jonathan, though his big, froglike brown eyes showed suspicion and caution. "Well, what do you think? Nothing serious, of course. One of those nasty semitropical fungi. Isn't it? Some of the patches are already fading. What do you think?"
"I've sent a scraping down to the laboratory," said Jonathan.
"Scraping? Why? Oh, to show the fungi?" Dr. Hedler was relieved. He turned to Mrs. Holliday. "Nothing more serious than fungus, my dear. Like, er, like the blisters one gets on one's feet. Nothing to worry about."
But Mrs. Holliday was staring with large angry malice at Jonathan. "Look at him! He doesn't agree with you, Louis! He's thinking up something terrible about my boy! Something terrible. Stop him, Louis!"
"Now, Elsie. How can I stop anyone from thinking?" Dr. Hedler's voice was like a sweet ointment. "Thinking doesn't make a thing so, you know."
"I believe it does!" said the hysterical woman with passionate emphasis. "You can do terrible things with your thoughts! I've heard you can even bring death—"
"Let's not be superstitious," said Louis. "Here, my dear, sit down. Do stop trembling."
But Mrs. Holliday pulled her chair as far as possible from Jonathan and then reached out and took her son's hand, her own cold and sweating. She said to her son, peering desperately into his face, "You mustn't listen, my darling, you mustn't listen! It's a lie! You know what this man is, you -know what he is!"
"Mama," said Jefferson.
Her voice rose almost to a scream. "Jefferson! Tell him to go away! Jefferson, you mustn't listen! You must just laugh at him!" She laughed suddenly and fiercely and looked at Jonathan with ferocious hatred and mad scorn. She tossed her head at him, and bit her Up, and laughed again. "Louis! Make him go away!"
Louis Hedler was deeply disturbed. He could not upbraid Jonathan, remembering how he had saved the life of little Hortense Nolan only the day before, yet he could not offend Mrs. Holliday, to whom the hospital owed so much. He met Jonathan's eye and saw his hard sympathy, and his plump cheek colored. He said, "In a moment, Elsie. We'll just get the laboratory reports." He said to Jonathan, "Can you tell me what you were looking for, Jon?"
"I'm not really looking for anything specifically," said Jonathan. "I'm just trying to eliminate—something."
Dr. Hedler was relieved. "What?"
"Let's wait."
"I was worrying about isolation," said the older doctor tentatively.
"And the newspapermen coming any minute!" said Mrs. Holliday, with fierce pride. "To interview Jefferson! All the wonderful things he's done in South America!"
Jonathan said, "They can't come in here until we know."
"Know what?" asked Dr. Hedler. He was newly dismayed, "You suspect contagion?"
"I'm not contagious!" said Jefferson, aghast. "Why, I've been with Elizabeth and her father for two weeks in New York, and months in South America! Contagion! My God, Jon, you don't mean—an infection?"
"I don't know," said Jonathan. "Here's Bob Morgan. Now well know for sure."
But Robert did not enter the room. He merely stood on the threshold and all the color was gone from his fresh young face. He mutely gestured to Jonathan, and Jonathan rose easily and said, "Want to go outside with us, Louis?"
"Why? Why?" screamed Mrs. Holliday. She jumped up. "I won't be cast aside! I want to hear! No one can stop me!"
Jonathan did not look at her. He went to the door, looked back. Louis was taking the trembling woman's arm and bringing her forward. "Of course, Elsie, you must hear—"
"What about me?" asked Jefferson with irony. "I'm only the one most concerned. But don't mind me, lads, don't mind me."
Jonathan stopped on the threshold. Then he slowly went to the middle of the room. He looked down at his friend. "You're right, Jeff. You should know, above everyone else. I'm not the kind to keep news of any kind from a patient. Come in, Bob, come in. Let's have a consultation." Robert Morgan implored him with his eyes, but Jonathan obstinately looked away from him. "We have a grown and intelligent man, here, Bob," he said. "A brave man. He should know, no matter what it is."
"Indeed," said Louis, lovingly forcing Mrs. Holliday back into her chair.
Robert Morgan came into the room, and his look was desperate. He spoke only to Jonathan. "There's no doubt," he said. "I've only seen slides before, but I'm sure." He paused and again silently implored Jonathan. "Hansen's disease."
Jonathan spread his legs and took a deep breath. His face was taut and bony. Mrs. Holliday looked malevolently from one face to the other and took her son's hand. "What! What!" she cried. "What is that? Hansen's disease. What is it?" Her glance was again full of hatred, directed at Jonathan. "What does this stupid, wicked man mean?"
Louis was bewildered. "Hansen's disease," he said slowly. He nodded his head. "I'm afraid— Jon, you are sure?"
"Bob is. I don't think the laboratory should know— Nor anyone else. Do you understand me, Louis?"
The older man was baffled. He turned to Robert. "Hansen's disease. I'm afraid I haven't encountered it before," he said. "Something new, tropical?"
"Something as old as hell," said Jonathan. "Louis, do you want me to give you the old and ancient name of i
t?"
"No need at all!" said Louis with haste. "One understands. We can't disturb patients, you know, Jon." He saw Jonathan's face.
"What I'd like to know," said Jefferson, "is just what is Hansen's disease."
Jonathan said to Louis Hedler, "I wish you'd persuade Mrs. Holliday to go into the waiting room and have a cup of tea or something."
"No!" shrieked Mrs. Holliday. "You are not, I say you are not going to lie about my boy, to kill him with fear, to lie, to lie, to he! You bad, wicked man! You—you murderer! Everyone knows what you did to your poor wife, everyone knows what you did to that poor little child, Martha Best, everyone knows-—"
"Mama," said Jefferson.
She turned on him with white fire, then stood up and took him in her arms and pressed his face into her meager breast. Over that tawny head she glared at Jonathan and actually spat at him. "Go away, murderer!" she cried. "Go away!"
"Elsie!" said Louis Hedler.
"Oh, I'll take him home, I'll take him home!" groaned the woman. "Away from murderers! Louis, you'll never see another penny of mine, not another penny!"
Then Jonathan went to her and took her away from her son, loosening her arms with controlled but steady violence. "Get away from him," he said. "Don't touch him." He pushed her off, and she staggered a little, and Louis caught her arm.
"I don't understand," said Louis, jolted. "It can't be that contagious, Jon. Elsie, do stop screaming. Please, my dear. Jon, it can't be that contagious."
Jonathan looked at him steadily in bitter silence. Then he said, "Louis, tell me. Do you know what Hansen's disease is?"
"Certainly."
"You lie," said Jonathan. "I should have known. Take that woman out and put her somewhere, then come back."