And now he was sick unto death. Dr. Atkinson of St. Mary’s, who has already played some minor part in this record, was attending him, and his reports were increasingly depressing. The illness was that dread disease, disseminated sclerosis, and Challenger was aware that Atkinson was no alarmist when he said that a cure was a most remote and unlikely possibility.
It seemed a terrible instance of the unreasonable nature of things that a young man of science, capable before he reached his prime of two such works as “The Embryology of the Sympathetic Nervous System” and “The Fallacy of the Obsonic Index,” should be dissolved into his chemical elements with no personal or spiritual residue whatever. And yet the Professor shrugged his huge shoulders, shook his massive head and accepted the inevitable. Every fresh message was worse than the last, and, finally, there was an ominous silence. Challenger went down once to his young friend’s lodging in Gower Street. It was a racking experience, and he did not repeat it. The muscular cramps, which are characteristic of the complaint were tying the sufferer into knots, and he was biting his lips to shut down the screams which might have relieved his agony at the expense of his manhood. He seized his mentor by the hand as a drowning man seizes a plank.
“Is it really as you have said? Is there no hope beyond the six months of torture which I see lying before me? Can you with all your wisdom and knowledge see no spark of light or life in the dark shadow of eternal dissolution?”
“Face it, my boy, face it!” said Challenger. “Better to look facts in the face than to console oneself with fancies.”
Then the lips parted and the long-pent scream burst forth. Challenger rose and rushed from the room.
But now an amazing development occurred. It began by the appearance of Miss Delicia Freeman.
One morning there came a knock at the door of the Victoria flat. The austere and taciturn Austin looking out at the level of his eyes perceived nothing at all. On glancing downwards, however, he was aware of a small lady, whose delicate face and bright bird-like eyes were turned upwards to his own.
“I want to see the Professor,” said she, diving into her handbag for a card.
“Oh, yes, he can,” the small lady answered serenely. There was not a newspaper office, a statesman’s sanctum, or a political chancellory which had ever presented a barrier strong enough to hold her back where she believed that there was good work to be done.