“Oh, not necessarily,” the young man replied, yawning slightly behind his hand, and too long accustomed to straightforward questions to be shocked at an evident wish for a direct reply. “His chances are better, because they'll hang him if he gets well. They took the ball and a good deal of shot out of his side, and there's a lot more for afterwhile, if he lasts. He's been off the table an hour, and he's still going.”
“That's in his favor, isn't it?” said Meredith. “And extraordinary, too?” If young Dr. Gay perceived a slur in these interrogations he betrayed no exterior appreciation of it.
“Shot!” exclaimed Homer. “Shot! I knowed there'd be'n a pistol used, though where they got it beats me—we stripped 'em—and it wasn't Mr. Harkless's; he never carried one. But a shot-gun!”
An attendant entered and spoke to the surgeon, and Gay rose wearily, touched the drowsy young man on the shoulder, and led the way to the door. “You can come now,” he said to the others; “though I doubt its being any good to you. He's delirious.”
They went down a long hall and up a narrow corridor, then stepped softly into a small, quiet ward.
There was a pungent smell of chemicals in the room; the light was low, and the dimness was imbued with a thick, confused murmur, incoherent whisperings that came from a cot in the corner. It was the only cot in use in the ward, and Meredith was conscious of a terror that made him dread, to look at it, to go near it. Beside it a nurse sat silent, and upon it feebly tossed the racked body of him whom Barrett had called Jerry the Teller.
The head was a shapeless bundle, so swathed it was with bandages and cloths, and what part of the face was visible was discolored and pigmented with drugs. Stretched under the white sheet the man looked immensely tall—as Horner saw with vague misgiving—and he lay in an odd, inhuman fashion, as though he had been all broken to pieces. His attempts to move were constantly soothed by the nurse, and he as constantly renewed such attempts; and one hand, though torn and bandaged, was not to be restrained from a wandering, restless movement which Meredith felt to be pathetic. He had entered the room with a flare of hate for the thug whom he had come to see die, and who had struck down the old friend whose nearness he had never known until it was too late. But at first sight of the broken figure he felt all animosity fall away from him; only awe remained, and a growing, traitorous pity as he watched the long, white fingers of the Teller “pick at the coverlet.” The man was muttering rapid fragments of words, and syllables.
“Somehow I feel a sense of wrong,” Meredith whispered to Gay. “I feel as if I had done the fellow to death myself, as if it were all out of gear. I know, now, how Henry felt over the great Guisard. My God, how tall he looks! That doesn't seem to me like a thug's hand.”
The surgeon nodded. “Of course, if there's a mistake to be made, you can count on Barrett and his sergeants to make it. I doubt if this is their man. When they found him what clothes he wore were torn and stained; but they had been good once, especially the linen.”
Barrett bent over the recumbent figure. “See here. Jerry,” he said, “I want to talk to you a little. Rouse up, will you? I want to talk to you as a friend.”