She smiled at hrni. 'What ought to be done ... in case . . . ?'
'I'm afraid I don't know of any antidote,' Paul confessed, sliding forward in the seat, the other side of Rosemary. 'Of course I'm no doctor. All we understand, in our business, is what the danger is. We're trained to be careful, too.'
'How did he ever get hold of it?' the nurse frowned.
Paul told her. As Mr. Gibson listened, he began to know that Paul Townsend was projecting himself somehow and being quite skillfully charming to this most attractive little person. Mr. Gibson found himself curiously affronted.
He looked at Rosemary, dear Rosemary, who sat still between them with her hands clenched . . . whose resolution was their strength, who had begun this fight and fired them all from her own spirit and collected these valiant lieutenants.
He said, 'What a fighter you are, Rosemary!'
'I am a rabbit,' she said bitterly. 'I was always a rabbit. I should have begun to fight long, long ago.'
Paul turned and covered her tense hands with one of his. 'Now, now, Rosie ... try to take it easy. You'll make yourself sick. Worry doesn't tiflp any, does it, Virginia?'
The nurse did not answer. The bus driver said, 'She's getting a lot of mileage out of her worry. Hey, Rosemary?''
'Yes, thank you,' said Rosemary, rather forlornly, collapsing a little from her rigidity. Paul took his hand away. 'I'm worrying now,' she said, 'trying to imagine a wealthy
woman picking up a strange package on a public bus. I don't suppose she would.'
'She might,' said the nurse brightly. 'By mistake, you see? Suppose she gathered it up with the other packages she was carrying. I didn't see her get off. I got off first. But who can say? And suppose she had things to eat in her own packages? She might dump them all in the kitchen. And she surely has servants. Her cook, for instance, wouldn't know. Her cook might think Mrs. Boat-right had meant to bring home some olive oil.'
'A little bottle?' said Rosemary pathetically. 'A very small quantity? What time is it?'
'Three thirty-seven,' Paul told her.
'It's still early, anyhow,' said Rosemary, with a desperate smile.
But Mr. Gibson thought, It's late. He thought of time gone by. Time enough for someone to have died already and very mysteriously, too. So that the news of the result might not yet have caught up with the cause. This fight might already have been lost, for all they knew.
'The Boatright kids are in their teens,' said the nurse thoughtfully. 'They certainly wouldn't be fed their supper this early.'
'Olive oil?' said Rosemary. 'What would a cook do with it?'
The nurse said, 'Salad? Oh ... to moisten a sandwich filling . . . possibly for a snack . . .'
'Don't say that!' said Paul.
The nurse said, 'I guess I'm helping her worry.'
'. . . Resembles thought,' muttered the bus driver.
But Mr. Gibson was appalled. A child! Oh, if a child were to get the poison! He said aloud, 'All of you ought to leave me. You are very good to trouble yourselves—'
'No trouble,' said Virginia. Mr. Gibson discovered that he believed her. 'I believe you,' he said to her in surprise and she smiled.
'Don't worry,' Paul began.
'Stop saying that,' said Rosemary quietly. 'It doesn't help, Paul.'
'I told you, Rosie,' he said rather crossly, 'you ought to have talked to him, laid things on the line . . .'
'You did. You told me. You were right,' said Rosemary, looking straight ahead. 'Yes, Paul.' Her hands twitched.
'You musta seen something brewing, Rosemary,' the bus driver said sympathetically, not quite understanding. He hadn't the background. 'A man doesn't decide in a day.'
(But I did, mused Mr. Gibson, wonderingly. In a night. I seemed to.)
'Have you been ill, Mr. Gibson?' the nurse asked, 'or taking drugs for pain? I see you limping.'
Mr. Gibson was bewildered. (His heart hurt. He wasn't dead at all.) 'A broken bone or two,' he murmured. 'Just an accident.' Rosemary turned her face to look at his. He looked away.
'I only wondered,' said Virginia gently. 'There are illnesses that can be very depressing. And some drugs, too.'
Mr. Gibson, gazing at a curb whizzing by, thought Doom, yes. Here comes doom, again.
'I was depressed,' he said without spirit. 'That's a name for it.'
'If you had only seen a doctor,' the nurse scolded him delicately, with her soft regret. 'So often a doctor can help these depressed feelings.'
'By a little tinkering in the machinery?' said Mr. Gibson rather bitterly.
'They do know how to help sometimes,' the nurse said, rather mechanically. She seemed to be tasting, perhaps diagnosing this answer.
