Shadows of Flames Part 41

"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 antic.i.p.ation 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--amus.e.m.e.nt--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.

x.x.x

That evening Anne Harding had what she called "a downright talk" with Lady Wychcote. The two "hit it off" very well, considering all things.

There was a certain hardness in the little trained nurse, as in the haughty old aristocrat, which commanded their mutual respect; though Anne's hardness was always kind, and Lady Wychcote's nearly always unkind. Still the two able creatures set a certain value on each other, and this wrought for understanding.

Anne told her ladyship outright that she would give up the case unless Dr. Carfew or Sir Lionel Playfair were put in charge. Dr. Bellamy had told her that he would not a.s.sume further responsibility. Sophy had ranged herself firmly on the side of Bellamy and Anne. Gerald was with her in this decision.

Lady Wychcote looked rather grimly at the Lilliputian envoy.

"Very well," she said. "But I will not countenance an enforced removal to one of their asylums."

"Could not your ladyship leave that to Doctor Carfew?"

"No," was her ladyship's reply.

"Perhaps I can bring _him_ to reason," Anne had said to Sophy after this interview. "At any rate, I want him to hear plainly, from a _man_, what his fate will be if he goes on with his poisons."

Sophy said nothing.

"Poor soul! She's given up!" thought Anne. "Well, _I_ must tussle to the bitter end--that's what nurses are here for."

As soon as Chesney was rational, she "had it out" with him.

"Well, for G.o.d's sake, bring on your d.a.m.ned quack and let him have his quack-quackery out!" was his surly response. "I suppose I'm of too tough a fibre to be slain by an a.s.s's jawbone. But I warn you--no sanatorium hocus-pocus!"

"Oh, you needn't worry!" Anne had said crossly. "Your mother's on your side. She'll help you destroy yourself. Mothers have a sort of gift that way, you know. But if you were _my_ man--I'd clap you in a safe place, no matter _what_ you said or did!"

Chesney gave her one of his ugliest looks.

"Leave me in peace!" he growled. "I've said I'd see your precious Carfew. Now you're working me up just because of your own nasty little temper. A fine nurse, _you_ are!"

"Well, I can't beat you for a patient," retorted Anne, with her puggy sniff.

That same night Bobby had a bad attack of croup. Sophy and Bellamy and Anne--who had left Chesney unceremoniously to the strange nurse's care--fought until daybreak for his life.

After it was all over, and Bobby safe, Bellamy told Sophy that the time to keep his promise had come. She gazed at him, startled--not recollecting.

"My promise to tell you frankly when I thought the boy needed a change of climate," he reminded her. "He needs it now, Mrs. Chesney. You both need it."

Sophy whitened.

"You don't mean...?"

"No, no! Nothing in the least serious. But, though we've had some fine days lately, the boy needs a drier climate--hotter sunshine. The Italian Lakes are not at all bad in summer, Mrs. Chesney, though people stare at the idea of going to Italy in the summer. I spent a delightful July and August once at Cadenabbia. Why not try Como? Or, if you want to be perfectly quiet, the other lake--Maggiore. There's a capital hotel at Baveno. I've been there, too. Nice gardens for the boy to play in.

Pleasant jaunts to the Barromean Islands--if you care for that sort of thing."

Sophy seemed to be only half listening to him. She had a far-away look in her eyes. He thought that she was brooding over the sad plight in which she would have to leave her husband if she took her boy to Italy.