“What’s his condition?”
“Dr. Marsh says the heart action is very weak and slow.”
“Respiration?” And Filhiol peered over his glasses at her as he sat there before his washstand, on which he had spread a newspaper, now covered with various little piles of powder.
“Hardly ten to the minute. For God’s sake, doctor, do something! Haven’t you got the formula yet?”
“Not yet, Laura. It’s a very delicate compound, and I have no means here for making proper analyses, or even for weighing out minute quantities. I don’t suppose a man ever tried to work under such fearful handicaps.”
“I know,” she answered. “But—oh, there must be some way you can get it!”
Their eyes met and silence came. On the porch roof, below the doctor’s window, the rain was ruffling all its drums. The window, rattled in its sash, seemed in the grip of some jinnee that sought to force entrance. Filhiol glanced down at his little powders and said:
“Here’s what I’m up against, Laura. I’m positively sure one of these two nearest me is correct. But I can’t tell which.”
“Why not test them?”
“One or the other is fearfully poisonous. My old brain doesn’t work as well as it used to, and after fifty years—But, yes, one of these two here,” and he pointed at the little conical heaps nearest him with the point of the knife wherewith he had been mixing them, “one of these two must be the correct formula. The other—well, it’s deadly. I don’t know which is which.”