I found Craig already at the bedside of Virginia. He had broken one of the ampules and was injecting some of the extract in it into the sleeping girl's arm. Mrs. Blakeley bent over eagerly as he did so. Even in her manner she was changed. There was anxiety for Virginia yet, but one could feel that a great weight seemed to be lifted from her.
So engrossed was I in watching Kennedy that I did not hear Doctor
Haynes and Hampton enter. Chapelle heard, however, and turned.
For a moment he gazed at Hampton. Then with a slight curl of the lip he said, in a low tone, "Is it strictly ethical to treat a patient for disease of the heart when she is suffering from anemia—if you have an interest in the life and death of the patient?"
I watched Hampton's face closely. There was indignation in every line of it. But before he could reply Doctor Haynes stepped forward.
"My son was right in the diagnosis," he almost shouted, shaking a menacing finger at Chapelle. "To come to the point, sir, explain that mark on Miss Virginia's forehead!"
"Yes," demanded Hampton, also taking a step toward the beauty doctor, "explain it—if you dare."
Cynthia suppressed a little cry of fear. For a moment I thought that the two young men would forget everything in the heat of their feelings.
"Just a second," interposed Kennedy, quickly stepping between them. "Let me do the talking." There was something commanding about his tone as he looked from one to the other of us.
"The trouble with Miss Virginia," he added, deliberately, "seems to lie in one of what the scientists have lately designated the 'endocrine glands'—in this case the pituitary. My X-ray pictures show that conclusively.
"Let me explain for the benefit of the rest. The pituitary is an oval glandular body composed of two lobes and a connecting area, which rest in the sella turcica, enveloped by a layer of tissue, about under this point." He indicated the red spot on her forehead as he spoke. "It is, as the early French surgeons called it, l'organe enigmatique. The ancients thought it discharged the pituita, or mucus, into the nose. Most scientists of the past century asserted that it was a vestigial relic of prehistoric usefulness. To-day we know better.