“On radios,” suggested Gainsay blandly.
Dr. Letheny smiled faintly but the hand that lit a fresh cigarette seemed a little unsteady.
“On radios,” he agreed.
“You are right though, Dr. Letheny.” Dr. Balman, who had apparently been engaged in digesting his dinner, spoke so suddenly that I jumped. He lounged toward the window and stood with his hands in his pockets looking down at St. Ann’s lights.
“You are right,” he repeated. “If I had one-half the money that is thrown away down there the experiment that failed for me this afternoon might have succeeded.” The bitterness in his voice was so grim that I think we all felt a little startled and uncomfortable. All, that is, except Corole, whose feelings are not easily accessible and who was manipulating the coffee machine over by the lamp. Its light brought the flat, gold waves of her hair into relief.
“Here is the coffee,” she said huskily. “As coffee should be: black as night, hot as hell, and sweet as love.” She offered the tiny cup to Gainsay.
Well, the rest of us had heard her say that before and Gainsay did not appear to hear her now. I could see that she was hesitating on the verge of repetition, but she was too wise for that.
“Can’t you stop needless expenditure?” asked Gainsay.
“Stop it?” Dr. Letheny laughed acidly. “Stop it when the hospital is privately endowed and the board of directors a bunch of ignorant, conceited asses! Look at this matter of radium. Nothing must do but that we buy a whole gram of radium. They had heard of radium. Other hospitals had it. Radium we must have and radium we bought. But try to talk to them of research, of discovering a new remedy for an old need, of the necessity for laboratories, for equipment, for study. You might as well try to stop the thunder storm that is coming as to ask them to see anything that is not squarely in front of their fat stomachs.”
“But radium,” said Gainsay mildly, “is a good thing for a hospital to have, isn’t it? I thought it a great discovery.”
“Of course, of course!” broke in Dr. Balman. “But we don’t need that much. Half a gram, a fourth of it—even a sixth of it would have served our purpose. But no! We must spend sixty-five thousand dollars for one tiny gram of radium. Sixty-five thousand dollars! And to my plea for half of that—only half of that money—they laughed. Laughed at study! At research! At laboratories and equipment! And called me a visionary. God! A visionary!”
It must have been that the increasing sultriness of the night and the tension of the approaching storm made us all a little nervous and easily stirred. A curious hush followed Franz Balman’s outbreak, during which I became aware of the heavy breathing of Dr. Hajek near me. I stirred impatiently and moved away. I had never either liked or disliked Fred Hajek, but that night I felt suddenly a sharp distaste for him. The atmosphere in the room seemed unbearably heavy and I shivered a little despite the heat and wondered if my dinner was not going to agree with me.
Gainsay got up, moved to get an ash tray, and sat down again in another chair. I noted that the move brought him nearer Maida, whose fine white profile was visible in the shadow near the window. She did not smoke—not, I believe, from any fastidious prejudice, but merely from distaste—and her hands, delicate yet strong, lay passively on the carved arms of the chair. She was the kind of person whose silences seem thoughtful and neither flat nor detached; a most companionable person to have around.
Corole noted the move, too, for she took my seat next to Hajek and murmured something under her breath to him.
“Are you both experimenting in the same field?” asked Gainsay, his ordinary, easy tone making my disquiet seem uncalled-for and silly.
“No,” said Dr. Letheny shortly.
“No,” said Dr. Balman. He turned abruptly away from the window and sat down at the shadowy end of the davenport; his shirt front thrust itself up in an ungainly hump but he did not appear to care.
“Well,” said Corole, “if I were a millionaire I should give you both the money to work to your heart’s content.”
“Indeed.” Dr. Letheny spoke so satirically that I feared an outburst from our hostess, whose temper was never of the best.
But she surprised me.
“No!” she retracted with disarming frankness. From habit Corole could lie like a trooper, but when she was inclined toward truth-telling she was quite candidly honest. “No,” she went on, “if I had a million dollars I should spend it—oh, how I should spend it! Silks and furs and jewels and servants and cars and cities and—”
“By that time it would be gone,” observed Dr. Letheny drily.
“Maybe,” Corole laughed huskily. “But how gloriously gone.”
“I suppose,” began Fred Hajek, with a little of the awkwardness that assails one who has remained silent a long time while others of the group are talking, “I suppose that idea is a sort of unacknowledged fairy dream hidden in everyone’s mind.”
“Of course.” Dr. Letheny’s voice grated to my ears. “Everybody wants money. Usually for reasons such as Corole has so charmingly admitted.”
“Not always,” disagreed Gainsay. “You and—er—Dr. Balman have just agreed that you both needed it for research.”
“A selfish reason, though,” replied Dr. Letheny. “We get the same pleasurable reaction out of study and science that Corole does out of clothes and jewels and—cream in
