"Oh, no!"
"No question of it. I'm so swearing mad this minute I could kill somebody,—in other words, that foul fiend of a James Van Horn—smooth-tongued hypocrite that he is!"
"Has he injured you?"
"Injured me? Knifed me in the back, every chance he got. Always has—but he never had such a chance as he has now. And plays the part of an angel of light in that house—fools them all. I'm the ill-tempered incompetent, he's the forbearing wise man. The case is mine, but he's played the game till they all have more confidence in him than they have in me. And he's got all the cards in his hand!"
He flung himself off the couch, and began to pace the room. Speech, once unloosed, flowed freely enough now,—he could not keep it back.
"The patient is a man of prominence—the matter of his recovery is a great necessity. If he were able to bear it he ought to be operated upon; but there isn't one chance in a hundred he'd survive an operation at present. There's at least one chance in ten he'll get well without one. I'm usually keen enough to operate, but for once I don't dare risk it. Van Horn advises operation—unreservedly. And the deuce of it is that with every hour that goes by he lets the family understand that he considers the patient's chances for relief by operation are lessening. He's fixing it so that however things come out he's safe, and however things come out I'm in the hole."
"Not if the patient gets well."
"No, but I tell you the chance for that is mighty slim—only one in ten, at best. So he holds the cards, except for that one chance of mine. And if the patient dies in the end it's because I didn't operate when he advised it—or so he'll let them see he thinks. Not in so many words, but in the cleverest innuendo of face and manner;—that's what makes me so mad! If he'd fight in the open! But not he."
"Would he have liked to operate himself?"
Burns laughed—an ugly laugh, such as she had never before heard from his lips. "Couldn't have been hired to, not even in the beginning, when he first advocated it. And I couldn't have let him, knowing as well as I know anything in life that the patient would never have left the table alive. Don't you see I've had to fight for my patient's very life,—or rather for his slim chance to live,—knowing all the while that I was probably digging my own grave. Easy enough to let Van Horn operate, in the beginning, and kill the patient and prove himself right,—if he would have done it. Easy enough to pull out of the case and let them have somebody who would operate on Van Horn's advice."