Hilda held up her forefinger unhesitatingly. She was used to such requests; and, indeed, Sebastian had acquired by long experience the faculty of pinching the fingertip so hard, and pressing the point of a needle so dexterously into a minor vessel, that he could draw at once a small drop of blood without the subject even feeling it.
The Professor nipped the last joint between his finger and thumb for a moment till it was black at the end; then he turned to the saucer at his side, which Hilda herself had placed there, and chose from it, cat-like, with great deliberation and selective care, a particular needle. Hilda’s eyes followed his every movement as closely and as fearlessly as ever. Sebastian’s hand was raised, and he was just about to pierce the delicate white skin, when, with a sudden, quick scream of terror, she snatched her hand away hastily.
The Professor let the needle drop in his astonishment. ‘What did you do that for?’ he cried, with an angry dart of the keen eyes. ‘This is not the first time I have drawn your blood. You knew I would not hurt you.’
Hilda’s face had grown strangely pale. But that was not all. I believe I was the only person present who noticed one unobtrusive piece of sleight-of-hand which she hurriedly and skilfully executed. When the needle slipped from Sebastian’s hand, she leant forward even as she screamed, and caught it, unobserved, in the folds of her apron. Then her nimble fingers closed over it as if by magic, and conveyed it with a rapid movement at once to her pocket. I do not think even Sebastian himself noticed the quick forward jerk of her eager hands, which would have done honour to a conjurer. He was too much taken aback by her unexpected behaviour to observe the needle.
Just as she caught it, Hilda answered his question in a somewhat flurried voice. ‘I – I was afraid,’ she broke out, gasping. ‘One gets these little accesses of terror now and again. I – I feel rather weak. I don’t think I will volunteer to supply any more normal blood this morning.’
Sebastian’s acute eyes read her through, as so often. With a trenchant dart he glanced from her to me. I could see he began to suspect a confederacy. ‘That will do,’ he went on, with slow deliberateness. ‘Better so. Nurse Wade, I don’t know what’s beginning to come over you. You are losing your nerve – which is fatal in a nurse. Only the other day you let fall and broke a basin at a most critical moment; and now, you scream aloud on a trifling apprehension.’ He paused and glanced around him. ‘Mr Callaghan,’ he said, turning to our tall, red-haired Irish student, ‘Your blood is good normal, and YOU are not hysterical.’ He selected another needle with studious care. ‘Give me your finger.’
As he picked out the needle, I saw Hilda lean forward again, alert and watchful, eyeing him with a piercing glance; but, after a second’s consideration, she seemed to satisfy herself, and fell back without a word. I gathered that she was ready to interfere, had occasion demanded. But occasion did not demand; and she held her peace quietly.
The rest of the examination proceeded without a hitch. For a minute or two, it is true, I fancied that Sebastian betrayed a certain suppressed agitation – a trifling lack of his accustomed perspicuity and his luminous exposition. But, after meandering for a while through a few vague sentences, he soon recovered his wonted calm; and as he went on with his demonstration, throwing himself eagerly into the case, his usual scientific enthusiasm came back to him undiminished. He waxed eloquent (after his fashion) over the ‘beautiful’ contrast between Callaghan’s wholesome blood, ‘rich in the vivifying architectonic grey corpuscles which rebuild worn tissues’, and the effete, impoverished, unvitalised fluid which stagnated in the sluggish veins of the dead patient. The carriers of oxygen had neglected their proper task; the granules whose duty it was to bring elaborated food-stuffs to supply the waste of brain and nerve and muscle had forgotten their cunning. The bricklayers of the bodily fabric had gone out on strike; the weary scavengers had declined to remove the useless by-products. His vivid tongue, his picturesque fancy, ran away with him. I had never heard him talk better or more incisively before; one could feel sure, as he spoke, that the arteries of his own acute and teeming brain at that moment of exaltation were by no means deficient in those energetic and highly vital globules on whose reparative worth he so eloquently descanted. ‘Sure, the Professor makes annywan see right inside wan’s own vascular system,’ Callaghan whispered aside to me, in unfeigned admiration.
The demonstration ended in impressive silence. As we streamed out of the laboratory, aglow with his electric fire, Sebastian held me back with a bent motion of his shrivelled forefinger. I stayed behind unwillingly. ‘Yes, sir?’ I said, in an interrogative voice.
The Professor’s eyes were fixed intently on the ceiling. His look was one of rapt inspiration. I stood and waited. ‘Cumberledge,’ he said at last, coming back to earth with a start, ‘I see it more plainly each day that goes. We must get rid of that woman.’
‘Of Nurse Wade?’ I asked, catching my breath.
He roped the grizzled moustache, and blinked the sunken eyes. ‘She has lost nerve,’ he went on, ‘lost nerve entirely. I shall suggest that she be dismissed. Her sudden failures of stamina are most
