hospital?â
Mr. Thompson smiled. âA doctor is quite right to humor his patient, Mr. Gamadgeâwhen the case is hopeless; but in a hospital we go on fighting for the patientâs life, Iâm afraid, until the end.â
âX-ray treatments, all that?â
âAnd blood transfusions. We never give up. But if we had done nothing at all, the result would have been quite the same.â
âWell, Iâm infinitely obliged to you, Mr. Thompsonââ
âI was going to suggest that if Miss Fisher cared to stop in this evening, Buckleyâs would be very glad to see herâto see any friend. They might be glad to have a little ceremony. Mr. Crenshaw was a lonely man; he had nobody. Rather a sad thing.â
âIâll tell Miss Fisher.â
Gamadge turned away in order to do so, and Mr. Thompson for the first time caught sight of Idelia on her bench. He paused, looked in considerable astonishment from her to Gamadge, gave it up, and with a backward glance of some perplexity removed himself from the scene.
The receptionist had settled down to her reading again; Gamadge, satisfied that she was out of earshot, sat beside Idelia and put out his hand. He touched hers in its brown fabric glove, withdrew his own, and said: âIâm sorry. But heâs all right now.â
Ideliaâs response was to turn a stony look upon him. She said âDrugs!â and repeated it. âDrugs!â
âIt wasnât a bad guess.â
âWhat is this leukemia, anyway?â
âI know a little more about it than I seemed to know; I wanted Thompson to hand out information. Itâs a disintegration of the white blood corpuscles, and when itâs acute itâs fatal.â
âAre you sick a long time?â
âNot always. The length of time varies.â
âMr. Gamadge, he knew all the time that he was going to die.â
âCrenshaw knew it while he was in Stonehill?â
âThatâs why he acted the way he did; I can see it now! As if he was done with everything.â
âHis doctor told them here that the first diagnosis was made by him in New York on the sixth of July.â
âThereâs some mistake. Mr. Crenshaw knew it before. Pike was his nurse; he wasnât afraid of him, he was afraid Pike would think he was tiring himself out, talking to strangers. Perhaps he forgot how sick he was while we were talking, and when he saw Pike that reminded himâthat he was going to die. No wonder he looked frightened!â
Gamadge said nothing.
âAnd of course he forgot all about me and the book,â said Idelia. âHe had that terrible attack. After he got to New York he had another. No wonder he forgot everything.â
âExcept business.â
âThings remind you of business.â
âThereâs one thing in favor of your theory, Idelia: The Tempest . It occurred to me from the first that that was just the play to take with you on a last journey. But why should Mr. Crenshaw have concealed the fact that Pike was his attendant, and told you and everyone that he had picked him up in Unionboro?â
âPerhaps he did pick him up in Unionboro. Perhaps he didnât want anybody to know how sick he was.â
âThen weâre dropping the inquiry?â Gamadge smiled at her. âYou donât want to know why your friend underlined those passages, what your friend wrote in the margins of his Shakespeare?â
Idelia, taken aback by the reminder, said after a moment: âI forgot about them. Perhaps he rubbed them out because they were something about dying, and he didnât want me to know.â
âThe underlined passages werenât about dying. The first one is about hanging, but that was a kind of joke.â
There was a long pause. Then Idelia said in a voice that had sunk to a whisper: âSomething was wrong. What could it be?â
Gamadge replied as softly: âWe might try