Perhaps the nature of these beings is best made clear by saying that they correspond very closely to the dragons, unicorns, and griffins, and to the horned, hoofed, and tailed devils of our own folk-lore.… The one common quality which these animals have for us is that they are all fabulous and non-existent. But our knowledge of this fact is derived entirely from science. The Indian, being without even the rudiments of scientific thought, believes as fully in the real existence of an animal as impossible as was ever fabled, as he does in that of animals most usual to him. In short, to the Indian the only difference between these monstrous animals and those most familiar to him is that, while he has seen the latter, he has not himself seen the former, though he has heard of them from others. These monstrous animals, in short, are regarded as on exactly the same level as regards the possession of body and spirits as are all other animals.
TWENTY-EIGHT
Sebastian had intended to begin his search for Evangeline Bancroft as soon as his other duties allowed. But when he read the midmorning message waiting for him at the cabmen’s stand, he forgot all else and ran. There was a crowd on the street outside the Evelina, and half of it seemed to comprise policemen. One of them tried to direct him away, but he pushed by and ignored the angry shout that followed him into the building.
In the hospital’s chaotic entrance hall he stopped the first sergeant that he saw and said, “Where is she?”
“Who are you?”
“Sebastian Becker. I’m the husband.”
“Who of?”
“Elisabeth Becker! The receiving officer’s clerk! I had a message to say she was attacked.”
“Ah,” the sergeant said. “One of the doctors is stitching her up.”
The entire place seemed to be in turmoil. By contrast the dispensary wing was almost empty, and the outpatients’ waiting area had been completely cleared. It was in one of the adjoining treatment rooms that Sebastian found his wife receiving care from one of the senior medical men. Sebastian recognized him; he was one of the doctors from Guy’s.
For a moment, Sebastian stood in shock. Elisabeth sat with her dress cut away to her bodice and her arm raised; her arm was bared, but covered in so much dried blood and iodine that it might have belonged to a terra- cotta statue, freshly dug from the wet earth. By contrast, her face was deathly white. Her expression was calm and serious. A few flecks of blood had peppered her neck and chin. A blood-spattered nurse held her steady while the surgeon, in waistcoat and rolled-up shirtsleeves, made at her arm with a needle that looked as if it might belong to a sailmaker.
“Oh my Lord,” Sebastian said.
The nursing sister, whom he didn’t know, was about to speak, but Elisabeth saw him and said, “Sebastian. Don’t be too distressed. It looks much worse than it is.”
But a brief glance up from her surgeon seemed to suggest otherwise. He met Sebastian’s eyes for a moment and then returned his attention to the work.
The fresh wound spiraled all the way around the length of Elisabeth’s forearm, like apple peel. Her fingers were bent, her wrist cocked. The surgeon had sutured about three-quarters of the slash. The wound above the stitches gaped, like a shallow rip in a cushion.
Sebastian said, “Can I stay?”
“If you’re prepared to help,” the surgeon said without taking his eyes from his work.
“How can I do that?”
“Hold her other hand. She’s got my knee squeezed down to the bone.”
She hadn’t realized. “Sorry,” she said, and released her grip on him. She might have blushed, if she’d had the color to spare. The surgeon smiled briefly, to tell her he wasn’t serious. Then the smile was gone.
Sebastian pulled over a chair and sat beside them. She gripped his hand tightly, and squeezed it even tighter whenever the needle passed through her skin.
“Not much longer now,” the surgeon said.
Sebastian said, “What happened?”
Elisabeth said, “It was the father of the consumptive girl. He showed up drunk again and demanded his daughter. He evaded Mister Briggs and found me in the receiving office. I asked him to leave and he set off for the wards. I didn’t know his knife was out when I tried to stop him.”
“You should have called someone.”
“There wasn’t time. Who’d imagine a man would turn on a woman like that?”
The surgeon paused in his work and asked her to move her fingers. She managed to flex them just a little, at the cost of some considerable discomfort that she tried not to show. But Sebastian felt it in her grip. He could feel every transferred nuance of her pain as the procedure went on.
He said, “I don’t mean to question your treatment. But would this not be better carried out in the operating room?”
“It would,” said the surgeon without taking his eyes off his work, “if we had the use of it. But the man’s still in the building. They’ve got him trapped upstairs.”
Sebastian needed a moment or two to take that in.
“Trapped?”
“On one of the wards, I was told.”
Then Sebastian was on his feet, with Elisabeth still clutching his hand; and the Guy’s surgeon, who’d been about to pass his needle into the skin of her forearm where the line of the wound passed over the tendons of her wrist, drew back with an unintended oath.
“Forgive me,” Sebastian said, prizing himself free, “but I deal in madmen. I may be able to give advice to bring about a safe outcome.”
“Sebastian, no!” Elisabeth said. “Stay with me!”
“Let me make the offer,” Sebastian said. “For the truth of it is, I know it’s a necessary pain, but I can’t watch you suffer like this.”
“Let him go,” the surgeon said to her, adding, without rancor, “because frankly, Mister Becker, you’re being neither use nor ornament here. If you can help the situation, please do. But be warned. Two minutes after he attacked your wife, the man killed a nurse.”
Firstly Sebastian had to find a way up to the wards, avoiding the pandemonium of the entrance hall. Because of his wife’s employment he had a better knowledge of the building than a casual visitor might, but he didn’t know it well. Making a turn out of the dispensary, within a few strides he found himself witness to a scene of exodus via the hospital’s back ways; all of the hospital’s sick children were being ushered down service stairs and through kitchen corridors by policemen, nurses, and some of the hospital’s civilian staff. They shuffled in near-silence, like a night- marching army. The children were mostly in nightshirts with blankets thrown around their shoulders. Some were carrying toys, while many of the smaller ones were being carried themselves.
There was Mister Briggs, big, stern Mister Briggs, craggy as a statue with a cracked heart full of well-hidden love, standing before a doorway with a hospital screen across it.
To those looking frightened by this strange experience he added to the strangeness by booming, “Go on, now, boys and girls. Go with the nurses. They will look after you. There’s nothing here to see.”
Then he glanced back at the folding screen, saw that its coverage of the opening behind it was not complete, and moved to make a careful adjustment.