“Never mind, never mind.”
Spencer got to his feet. “Now, hold on there, Doc,” he said. “You’re doing a fine job. The luckiest thing that ever happened to these people is having you on board.”
“All right, junior,” Baird retorted sarcastically, “you can spare me the salesman’s pep talk. I’m not proposing to run out on you.”
The younger man flushed slightly. “Fair enough — I asked for that. Well, tell me what I can do. I’ve been sitting warming my seat while you’ve been hard at it. You’re tired.”
“Tired nothing.” Baird put his hand on the other man’s arm. “Take no notice of me. I worked off a bit of steam on you. Feel better for it. It’s knowing what ought to be done and not being able to do it. Makes me a little raw.”
“That’s okay,” Spencer said with a grin. “Glad to be of some use, anyway.”
“I’ll tell Miss Benson you’re willing to help if she needs you. Once the water is all given out, I think maybe you’d better stay where you are. There’s more than enough traffic in the aisle already.”
“As you say. Well, I’m here if you want me.” Spencer resumed his seat. “But tell me — just how serious is all this?”
Baird looked him in the eye. “As serious as you are ever likely to want it,” he said curtly.
He moved along to the group of football fans who had earlier in the evening imbibed whisky with such liberality. The quartet was now reduced in strength to three, and one of these sat shivering in his shirt sleeves, a blanket drawn across his chest. His color was gray.
“Keep this man warm,” said Baird. “Has he had anything to drink?”
“That’s a laugh,” replied a man behind him, shuffling a pack of cards. “He must have downed a couple of pints of rye, if I’m any judge.”
“Before or after dinner?”
“Both, I reckon.”
“That’s right,” agreed another in the group. “And I thought Harry could hold his liquor.”
“In this case it’s done him no harm,” Baird said. “In fact, it has helped to dilute the poison, I don’t doubt. Have any of you men got any brandy?”
“Cleared mine up,” said the man with the cards.
“Wait a minute,” said the other, leaning forward to get at his hip pocket. “I might have some left in the flask. We gave it a good knocking, waiting about at Toronto.”
“Give him a few sips,” instructed Baird. “Take it gently. Your friend is very ill.”
“Say, Doctor,” said the man with the cards, “what’s the score? Are we on schedule?”
“As far as I know, yes.”
“This puts paid to the ball game for Andy, eh?”
“It certainly does. We’ll get him to hospital just as soon as we land.”
“Poor old Andy,” commiserated the man with the hip flask, unscrewing the cap, “he always was an unlucky so-and-so. Hey,” he exclaimed as a thought struck him, “you say he’s pretty bad — he’ll be all right, won’t he?”
“I hope so. You’d better pay him some attention, as I said, and make sure he doesn’t throw off those blankets.”
“Fancy this happening to old Andy. What about ’Otpot, that English screwball? You drafted him?”
“Yes, he’s giving us a hand.” As Baird stepped away the man with the cards flicked them irritably in his hand and demanded of his companion, “How d’you like this for a two-day vacation?”
Further along the aisle, Baird found Janet anxiously bending over Mrs. Childer. He raised one of the woman’s eyelids. She was unconscious.
Her husband seized frantically on the doctor’s presence.
“How is she?” he implored.
“She’s better off now than when she was conscious and in pain,” said Baird, hoping he sounded convincing. “When the body can’t take any more, nature pulls down the shutter.”
“Doctor, I’m scared. I’ve never seen her so ill. Just what is this fish poisoning? What caused it? I know it was the fish, but why?”
Baird hesitated.
“Well,” he said slowly, “I guess you’ve a right to know. It’s a very serious illness, one that needs treatment at the earliest possible moment. We’re doing all we can right now.”
“I know you are, Doctor, and I’m grateful. She is going to be okay, isn’t she? I mean—”
“Of course she is,” said Baird gently. “Try not to worry. There’ll be an ambulance waiting to take her to hospital immediately we land. Then it’s only a question of treatment and time before she’s perfectly well again.”
“My God,” said Childer, heaving a deep breath, “it’s good to hear you say that.” Yes, thought Baird, but supposing I had the common guts to put it the other way? “But listen,” Childer suggested, “couldn’t we divert — you know, put down at a nearer airport?”
“We thought of that,” answered Baird, “but there’s a ground fog which would make landing at other fields highly dangerous. Anyway, we’ve now passed them and we’re over the Rockies. No, the quickest way of getting your wife under proper care is to crack on for Vancouver as fast as we can, and that’s what we’re doing.”
“I see… You still think it was the fish, do you, Doctor?”
“At present I’ve no means of telling for certain, but I think so. Food poisoning can be caused either by the food just spoiling — the medical name is staphylococcal poisoning — or it’s possible that some toxic substance has accidentally gotten into it during its preparation.”
“What kind do you think this is, Doctor?” asked a passenger in the next row who had been straining to hear Baird’s words.
“I can’t be sure, but from the effect that it’s had on the folk here I’d suspect the second cause rather than the first — a toxic substance, that is.”
“And you don’t know what it is?”
“I have no idea. We won’t know until we’re able to make proper tests in a laboratory. With modern methods of handling food — and especially the careful way in which airlines prepare food — the chances of this happening are a million to one against. We just happen to be unfortunate. I can tell you, though, that our dinner tonight didn’t come from the usual caterers. Something went wrong owing to our late arrival at Winnipeg and another firm supplied us. That may or may not have a bearing on it.”
Childer nodded, turning the conversation over in his mind. Funny how people seem to find comfort in a medical man’s words, Baird reflected in a sardonic appraisal of himself. Even when what a doctor has to say is bad news, the fact that he has said it seems to be reassuring to them. He’s the doctor; he won’t let it happen. Maybe we haven’t come so far from witchcraft, he thought to himself with a touch of anger; there’s always the doctor with his box of magic, to pull something out of the hat. Most of his life had been spent in nursing, coaxing, bullying, cajoling — reassuring frightened and trusting people that he knew best, and hoping each time that his old skill and sometimes very necessary bluff had not deserted him. Well, this could be the moment of truth, the final, inescapable challenge which he had always known would face him one day.
He felt Janet standing beside him. He questioned her with his eyes, sensing her to be on the edge of hysteria.
“Two more passengers have been taken ill, Doctor. At the back there.”
“Are you sure it isn’t just the pills?”
“Yes, I’m quite sure.”
“Right. I’ll get to them straight away. Will you have another look at the first officer, Miss Benson? He might feel like a little water.”
He had barely reached the two new cases and begun his examination before Janet was back again.
“Doctor, I’m terribly worried. I think you ought to—”
The buzz of the galley intercom cut across her words like a knife. She stood transfixed as the buzz continued without a break. Baird was the first to move.
“Don’t bother with that thing,” he rapped out. “Quick!”
Moving with an agility quite foreign to him, he raced along the aisle and burst into the flight deck. There he paused momentarily, while his eyes and brain registered what had happened, and in that instant something inside
