Shadows of Flames Part 31

"I've some things I must talk to you about."

Sophy took the nurse up to her bedroom and locked the door.

"What is it?" she asked, fixing her dilated eyes on the shrewd black ones.

"Please don't look so frightened," said Anne kindly. "It's just the usual worries in a case like this. I've talked with Dr. Bellamy already; but I must have your help."

"Go on, please," said Sophy.

Anne took up the poker, and began breaking the big lump of coal in the grate as she said this. Little spirals of greenish-yellow smoke escaped from the cracks made by the poker, then jetted into flame. She was so sorry for this beautiful, scared woman, that she looked doggedly at the lump of coal all the time that she was speaking.

"It's just that Mr. Chesney is getting extra morphia--I mean taking it himself--lots of it----" she began bluntly.

"Oh!" cried Sophy. It was a sort of gasp. Then she said hurriedly: "But it's impossible, nurse. How can he get it? Gaynor, his valet, and I had all there is. Now we've turned it over to you--with both the syringes."

"He's getting it, ma'am," said Anne firmly. "And he's taking it hypodermically, too."

"Oh, don't you think you are mistaken?"

"No, Mrs. Chesney. I couldn't be."

"But--but---- Have you----"

She could not bring it out. She could not ask this little stranger woman whether she had searched Cecil's things for the stuff--for another syringe.

"Yes, I've hunted--thoroughly--through everything," Anne said quite as a matter of course, guessing what she had meant to ask. "He sleeps so heavily, when he does sleep--from the acc.u.mulated effects, you know--that I've even been able to feel between the mattresses. I've searched the edges for a rip where he might have stuffed it inside. I've looked through everything--but his letter-box."

She shattered the lump of coal quite as she said this.

"That's why I've come to you. He's in one of those heavy sleeps. I've got the letter-box and the key in my room. I want you to open it and look for me. I didn't quite like to do that."

Sophy gulped shame. Its tang was bitterer than wormwood. Then she felt a sudden anger against this cool, white-capped little creature who summoned her suddenly to violate her husband's private property.

"No. I can't do that, Nurse," she said coldly. "Not on an uncertainty."

"But it's quite certain," said Anne Harding patiently. "Wait-- I'll prove it to you."

She turned at last and looked at Sophy.

"In order to be quite sure," she said--"you know, ma'am, Dr. Bellamy had told me _he_ felt pretty sure that Mr. Chesney was getting more than the chart showed. Well, to be _quite_ sure, I subst.i.tuted salt and water for _four_ out of the six doses I've given in twenty-four hours. Now you see, ma'am, to cut a patient down suddenly in the doses like that would make him suffer something awful if he was really not getting more himself."

Sophy sat gazing at her.

"How would it make him suffer?" she said at last. Her voice was almost a whisper.

"Oh, nerves--terrible--we've no way of imagining what they go through when the drug's taken away sudden. I nursed a case once where the doctor had that method. But I'd never do it again, ma'am. The patient twisted the bars at the foot of the bed in his agony like they had been paper.

It was a bra.s.s bed. No, ma'am. I'd never be party to a thing like that again."

Sophy felt as if she were ill herself.

"Don't!" she said. She put up her hand over her face, as she leaned sick and weak in her chair. "Don't tell me things like that--please."

"I'm sorry, Mrs. Chesney," said the nurse in her kind, blunt way. "But you see I had to prove my point to you. It's a most important one. That box _must_ be searched, ma'am. And you see I don't like to go into Mr.

Chesney's private papers. Now you, as his wife, can do it without its being any harm. Wait a minute, though--are you sure of this man, Gaynor?"

"Absolutely."

"It's very hard to be sure of people in a morphia case, Mrs. Chesney.

Sometimes just pity makes 'em give the drug to the patient."

"I am quite sure of Gaynor. I'll tell you why," Sophy added, feeling that it was due the nurse to do so. And she told her of the part that Gaynor had played in the tragic story.

"Well, I should say _he's_ safe then," admitted Anne, when Sophy had finished. "And now that I feel sure of that, won't you let me bring you that box, Mrs. Chesney? You want to save Mr. Chesney, and that's the only way to do it--to help me and the doctor," she added shrewdly.

Sophy could scarcely have grown paler than she was.

"Go ... bring it...." she said in a faint voice.

Anne brought the red morocco box, with C. G. C. stamped on it in worn gold letters, and handed it with the key to Sophy.

As the nurse set the box upon her knees, Sophy looked so ghastly that Anne exclaimed:

"Oh, pray, _pray_, Mrs. Chesney, don't take it so hard! It's for his good we're doing it--to save him."

"Yes," said Sophy.

With a firm gesture she thrust the key suddenly into the small spring-lock and turned it. As she felt the lid rise beneath her hand, it seemed to her as though she had by this act shared his degradation--drawn part of it into her own blood. With her slender, n.o.bly shaped hands she began to search among the letters and doc.u.ments.--Nothing. The colour began to rise again into her white face.

Eagerly she turned the contents out upon her lap. Nothing. Nothing.

"You see!" she cried, her tone was almost joyous. "There's nothing of the kind--you were mistaken! There's nothing--nothing!"

Anne frowned. Then she said soberly:

"Well, I've _got_ to find it--somehow. It's wonderful their cleverness at hiding the stuff."

"But, Nurse Harding," said Sophy reproachfully, that vivid colour still in her face, "a hypodermic syringe-case isn't a thing that can be hidden away easily. You've told me that you've looked everywhere. Isn't it rather cruel to be suspicious to this extent?"

"Mrs. Chesney," said Anne Harding, her black eyes like little gems with hard, cruelly-kind astuteness. "If the angel Gabriel was given me for a morphia patient, _I'd pluck his wings_--for fear he'd hide the nasty stuff among the feathers!"

She was a character, was Anne Harding, so utterly unlike any English nurse that Sophy had ever seen before, that she wondered whether indeed she could really be English. Anne was very quick at following the probabilities of thought-sequence, for she smiled suddenly her childish smile, that contrasted so oddly with the almost elf-like shrewdness of her eyes, and said:

"Pray forgive my speaking that way. I come from the Bush, you know. I'm an Australian. We've a blunt sort of way of speaking out there."

Chesney was quite amiable with the little nurse. He knew of course that she suspected him, but the very fact that he had so entirely outwitted her made him feel a sort of grim pleasure in her presence.

"She's a good little rat," he said to Sophy. "Not over-burdened with brains, though."

And he smiled his secretive smile.