Anne Harding arrived at ten o'clock. Bellamy asked Sophy to explain the
situation to the nurse while she changed into her uniform. There was no
time to lose. He would see her himself as soon as she had dressed.
Bellamy had wanted a locksmith sent for to pick the lock of Chesney's
door while he slept, but Lady Wychcote would not have this. She was
determined that things should wait as they were for Nurse Harding's
arrival.
"She may want to make him open the door himself--for the moral effect of
it," she said, with real acumen.
"Awfully keen old lady she is, my word!" Anne had exclaimed, when Sophy
told her this. "Just what I do want!"
"But, Nurse, do you think he will open that door for any one?" Sophy had
asked, wondering.
"I know how to make him--never you fear," Anne had replied crisply.
"We'll have to wait a bit--for him to sober up, you know," she added,
with her usual bluntness.
She then went for her interview with Bellamy. It astounded and chagrined
her to find that Chesney had procured morphine and cocaine, for she was
convinced that he had been in possession of it all the while. She felt
humiliated, in her capacity of little Know-All, that she had been
ignorant of this fact. For the present, however, she contented herself
with seeing that all the alcohol in the house was locked safely away.
Her little brown mouth looked very grim as she sat near the bedroom
door, waiting for Chesney to wake from his stupefied slumber.
He did not rouse till nearly four o'clock. Then she heard short,
impatient moans, given under his breath, as it were. The bed creaked now
and again with his feverish tossings. Anne lifted an alert head. She
half smiled, queerly; then turned to Gaynor. The two had sat side by
side for hours now--Anne crocheting, the valet looking down at his hands
or straight at the wall opposite.
"Go get a small glass of brandy, please," she said, putting her
crochet-work into her pocket.
The valet looked so startled that she nodded to him reassuringly.
"That's all right," she said. "Doctor Bellamy knows. You trust to me."
"I do, miss," he said meekly, and went to fetch the brandy.
When he brought it, Anne took the glass in her hand, and, rising, rapped
sharply on Chesney's door.
"It's me, sir--Nurse Harding," she said, in her most matter-of-fact
voice. "You'll let _me_ in, won't you?"
Perfect silence. Even the restless tossing stopped. Gaynor looked at her
in deep discouragement. She only smiled again, bobbing her black curls
at him with the energy of her consoling nod. "That's all right, my good
man," the nod said. "I'm just taking my own time about it."
His puckered face smoothed out somewhat.
"See here, sir," called Anne, rapping on the door again. "You know I've
always played fair and square with you. I just want to tell you that I
know you'll be needing brandy to-day, and I have it here for you--a
glass of it--in my hand. If you'll only open the door for me, I'll give
it you right away."
She heard the bed creak. She called again:
"It's the physic that you need, Mr. Chesney, and you know it as well as
I do. You won't get it any other way. Come--be a good sport and let me
in!"
There was another silence; then she heard his slow, heavy, dragging
tread along the floor. The door shook suddenly. He had evidently half
fallen against it for support. Then the key turned. Anne pushed the door
open and went in, closing it behind her in Gaynor's dumfounded face. The
valet felt a faint revival of his childhood's belief in witches as the
little black-maned figure disappeared behind that dread door and closed
and locked it. Lion-tamers were but feeble folk compared with her. He
sat down on the hall-chair nearest, and wiped his forehead.
Anne told Dr. Bellamy afterwards that Chesney that day was the
"grisliest sight she had ever looked on in twelve years of mighty varied
nursing."
When she entered he was returning laboriously to his bed. He swayed as
he went, and the little nurse gave him her thin arm and shoulder for
support. The two went reeling slowly across the room, Anne with the
glass of brandy held at arm's length to keep from slopping it.
The great hulk fell helplessly upon the bed, and she dragged the
bedclothes over him with her free hand. As she looked at him, she
thought that this might be the end of him--his unshaven face was so
congested with alcohol and morphia. There was a yellow-white ring around
his nostrils and the edge of his moustache.
She supported his head and fed him the raw spirit as a woman feeds milk
to a baby out of a feeding-mug. He drank languidly at first; then
greedily.
She left him lying, and set about to tidy the room. Thrusting her curly
head from the door, she sent Gaynor for warm water, fresh bed-linen, and
pyjamas. When she dressed him and made up the bed, she sat down beside
him with businesslike fingers on his pulse, and her eyes on the
bracelet-watch.
She then fed him half a glass of hot milk as she had fed him the brandy,
and waited patiently. In ten minutes he was asleep again.
When Lady Wychcote heard that her son had admitted Nurse Harding to his
room and was sleeping again after taking some nourishment, she felt
immensely encouraged and relieved. Anne left her this happy illusion,
but with Sophy she was perfectly frank.
"He's got what we nurses sometimes call a 'wet brain,' Mrs. Chesney.
That means _delirium tremens_ to a greater or less degree. He must have
been sopping up that spirit like a sponge, long before Gaynor suspected
him. I fancy we'll have lively times for the next week or so."
This diagnosis proved correct. For three nights and days Nurse Harding
scarcely slept, though another nurse was wired for, to be under her
orders.
On the afternoon of the fourth day, when Chesney was sleeping under the
influence of a moderate dose of morphia, Anne left Nurse Hawkins in
charge, and went to Sophy's room. Her little face looked bleached rather
than pale. Her skin was so swarthy that it could never reach actual
pallor. It looked to-day like an autumn leaf that has been bleached by
the following season's rains and suns. In answer to Sophy's exclamation
of sympathy, she sank down upon a chair, saying:
"Yes, I _am_ rather done, Mrs. Chesney--just for the moment, you know.
I'm going to turn in for a four hours' sleep now. That will set me up
again. But somehow I can't rest well, for thinking of where that extra
morphia can be hidden. I feel such a fool about it, Mrs. Chesney. It's
my _duty_ to find it. I feel a regular amateur--a duffer----"
"Oh, dear Nurse Harding! How can you feel so?" asked Sophy warmly. "It
would baffle any one--any one!"
Anne took her peaked little face between her brown fists, resting her
elbows on her knees, and shaking her head disconsolately.
"I've been called 'Miss Sherlock Holmes' in my day," she admitted
ruefully. "But I rather think my day's gone by. May I sit with you and
puzzle over it a bit, before going for my sleep?"
Sophy made her warmly welcome. She even urged the little thing to lie
down on her sofa and rest, at least while she cogitated. But Anne
refused with resolution.
"No," she said. "No; thank you so much, Mrs. Chesney. Just let me sit
here in this armchair. I can think better sitting."
She sat for a minute or two, frowning down at the carpet; then suddenly
she turned to Sophy, with the oddest little guilty smile, half
embarrassed, half determined.
"I'll tell you what you can do for me, Mrs. Chesney," she said. "I've
got a little vice of my own, though I make it a rule never to indulge it
when I'm on a case. But now--I do so need to think hard--it's so
important for my patient that I should. Could you, would you be so kind
as to give me a cigarette and let me smoke it here? You see, I haven't
any with me--and I daren't smoke in my room, for fear of the housemaids.
Do you think me _very_ impertinent and cheeky for asking you this
favour, Mrs. Chesney?"
"Oh, my dear girl!" cried Sophy. "Of course you shall have a cigarette.
I have some very nice ones of my own...." She turned to get them; then
remembered.
"What a pity!" she said. "Mine are all out. They gave out some days ago,
and I forgot to order more."
Then she brightened.
"But I remember, now-- I have some of my husband's here. They are very
good, only rather too large, I think. But I have cigarette-papers. You
can pull one to pieces, and roll it smaller--as he does, you know."
Anne laughed when Sophy opened the table drawer and handed her one of
the huge cigarettes.
"It _is_ a corker, isn't it?" she said, but her black eyes gleamed. She
added whimsically: "I don't think I'll thin it down, though. Since I'm
to have a smoke (and it's awfully unprofessional of me to do it while
I'm on a case) I might as well have a good one while I'm about it."
She put the big white roll of thin paper and gold-hued tobacco between
her lips, and held a match to it, drawing her thin cheeks in with
luxurious anticipation of the first whiff. But the cigarette drew badly;
wouldn't draw at all, in fact. She took it from her mouth, looking at it
disappointedly.
"Here--take another," urged Sophy, holding it to her. "That must have
got damp in some way. Try this one."
But the second cigarette refused to draw also. Sophy forced a third on
her. That, too, was a failure.
"I see now why he's taken to rolling them over," said Anne: "This lot
must be badly rolled. It's a pity to have wasted so many; but if I may
have a cigarette-paper I'll just unroll one of these and do it over."
Sophy handed her the little packet of rice-paper, and gave her a lacquer
pen-tray in which to put the loose tobacco. Anne's deft fingers made
quick work of one of the big rolls. She whipped off its white sheath,
and began shredding the packed tobacco neatly. All at once she gave a
cry. She sat staring down at the tray as though it had turned into a
Gorgon's head.
"What is it?" asked Sophy, startled.
The girl made a clutch at her, dragging her nearer, without taking her
eyes from the loose tobacco in the tray.
"Look, Mrs. Chesney! _Look!_" she cried, her voice a low tremolo of
excitement. She touched something in the tray with the tip of her
finger-nail. It was a little white object, round, flat ... indeed, there
were several of them--some tangled among the tobacco, some having
dropped clear on the dark surface of the lacquer.
Sophy stared. The truth didn't dawn on her.
"Were they in the _cigarette_?" she asked. "_What_ are they?"
Then Anne, overwrought with sleeplessness and excitement, so far forgot
herself that, setting the tray on the table, she seized the tall lady in
her arms and hugged her wildly.
"What are they? Morphia!... Morphia!... Morphia!" she chanted, as she
hugged Sophy to her in little jerks that accompanied each cry of
"Morphia!"
"Morphia ... and cocaine, probably, Mrs. Chesney! Oh, the clever devil!
The clever, clever devil!"
* * * * *
This secreting of tablets of morphia and cocaine in the big cigarettes
had been the employment of Chesney during those hours behind locked
doors before leaving London. With a pair of very long, slender forceps,
he had pulled out part of the tobacco, dropped the tablets into the
hollow thus made, and repacked the tobacco cunningly upon them. Hours
and hours he had spent thus, making tiny marks on the cigarettes which
contained the different drugs, that he might know them apart. Certain
cigarettes he left intact. He mixed these and the doctored ones in the
boxes, large tin cases made for importation, which he sealed up again
cleverly, with a tiny strip of paper on the same tone as the wrapper.
The morphinomaniac's imagination works in spurts. First come jets of
cerebral luminosity; then gaps of a grey vagueness. Cecil's constructive
fancy had not worked beyond the point of laying in a large supply of the
drug. He had not considered how he would procure more when it should
have given out. He had provided for several months ahead. After that he
trusted to chance and cunning.
When Sophy understood--and understanding had come in a flash, even as
she questioned, even before Anne Harding's triumphant cry--she felt that
this was the last straw. Something seemed to go _click!_ within her, as
though the fine mechanism of her reasoning mind had set itself to
another gauge--would not, forever any more, work to the old standard.
She must forgive--but she could never forget. And what is forgiveness
without forgetfulness? The cold body of duty, mummied by
conscientiousness, void of soul or life. She was done. He had seen her
misery, her anguish of anxiety, her heart-racking efforts to help him,
and day after day he had said to her, with that faint, mocking smile
that her blood burned in remembering:
"Just hand me a cigarette, will you, Sophy?"
And she had handed them to him, had fetched and carried the poison
for him like a well-trained retriever. And he had found
pleasure--amusement--in thus making her the unconscious instrument of
her own frustration--the innocent minister of his vile vice!
That was the most tragic moment of all to her--the moment when she gazed
down at those little dots of white on the lacquer tray, and realised
what they were.