"What do you think one ought to do, doctor?" she inquired. "She can't stay here, naturally. Don't you think one should try to get her into some really safe place, where she could be properly looked after?"
Something a little tense and sharp in the tone riveted Roger's attention. With his arm still about Esther he turned his head and listened. He heard the heavy tones of Sartorius make answer evenly, without emotion of any kind:
"She is still raving; we must simply let her be for the moment till she quiets down. I will see what can be done. There is a mental home near Grasse where I believe they would take her; I can telephone and find out. They would keep her under observation until we can get in touch with her people."
"Oh, doctor, do you really think that will be necessary?" asked Miss
Clifford regretfully.
She had just come out of Thérèse's room bringing a rose taffeta quilt to throw over the shivering girl. Roger made an impatient sign to the others to be careful what they said, but to his relief Esther appeared not to hear. He himself was peculiarly upset by the doctor's matter-of-fact reference to the mental home, and on the spot he resolved firmly to defeat any arrangements that might be made for placing the girl where she could be kept "under observation." Yet what ought one to do? She was clearly in need of medical attention. She seemed now to be delirious, babbling incoherently, repeating in an undertone and in that strange hoarse voice fragments of words and phrases that in spite of their wildness arrested his attention. Listening closely to her he thought that all the happenings of the past two months of her life had become interwoven into the fabric of her delusion. Such words as "typhoid," "toxin," "hypodermic," "bandage," recurred again and again, then "culture"—she was back in the doctor's laboratory now, without doubt, watching his experiments. Suddenly a name caught his ear, he bent closer. What was this she was saying about Holliday? Holliday? How did he come into it? A low, frightened whisper followed; he had to strain his ears to catch it: "She wanted the money now, you know, so she could keep him with her!"
He stared at the girl searchingly. Her eyes were closed, she had the look of complete exhaustion. He could almost not believe she had spoken those significant words. Did she know what she was saying? Was it mere accident that her last sentence had sounded so astonishingly rational?
Still keeping one arm beneath her shoulders he once more looked around and took a cautious survey of the other end of the room. Thérèse was no longer to be seen; she must have slipped out, but his aunt was saying something in an anxious undertone to the doctor, who at that moment had moved nearer the fireplace. Watching narrowly Roger noticed the big man put out his hand towards the blazing logs, then saw a small scrap of something flimsy and white—it might have been paper, or perhaps a tiny piece of the medical gauze he had been using—flutter into the flames. The gesture was so negligent that in the ordinary way one would not have given it a second thought, yet now, because of Esther's unintelligible reference to a bandage, it awoke in Roger a vague uneasiness. Again the incredible suspicion crossed his mind; he caught himself wondering if just possibly there were more in this than met the eye.
Studying the white, bloodstained face lying against the blue cushion, he asked himself if Esther did really possess some terrible knowledge of which he was completely ignorant. Could her jumbled utterances be linked together into any sort of meaning? As if conscious of his unspoken question she stirred restlessly, muttering words he could not catch, then turned a little away from him on to her right side. As she did so his gaze fell upon her left coat sleeve. There was a spot near the shoulder, no bigger than a half-crown, where the material was oddly frayed and roughened. He examined it closely, then as gently as possible unfastened the coat and slipped it down from the shoulder…. What was this? The heavy crêpe-de-Chine blouse underneath, in the spot that corresponded, was punctured with tiny, round holes, a little constellation, thickly grouped. What did it mean? He laid his finger on the spot, but at the touch she recoiled from him with a shudder that shook her from head to foot.
"No, no, not again!" she cried out in her former accents of terror.
He soothed her, gripped by a sudden fear.