"Cured, sir?" said Lionel. "Why shouldn't I be? There's been nothing wrong with me except fever. But I'm not joking. I want to know about these animals. What were you thinking of to let them out?"
"Lionel," said Roger, "for the last five weeks you've been dying of sleeping sickness. The atoxyl was lost. I believe you threw it away."
"There's the atoxyl," said Lionel, pointing. "In the hole in the wall there. I put it there yesterday, after dosing those two."
Sure enough, there stood the bottle in the dimness of a hole in the wall. Roger must have passed it some fifty times.
"I looked for it everywhere," said Roger.
Lionel's eyes narrowed to the sharpness of medical scrutiny. He examined Roger for some time.
"Let me take your pulse, Lionel," said Roger, staring back.
"My pulse is all right," said Lionel. "Be off and look for guinea-pigs." The pulse was all right; so was the flesh of the wrist.
"I suppose the next thing you'll want me to believe is that I've still got sleeping sickness? Well, look at my tongue. Perhaps that will convince you." Lionel waited for an answer for a moment with protruding tongue. The tongue was steady. Lionel returned to the charge. "What have you been playing at with those Weissner serum pans?" he asked. "Have you been bleeding the monkeys? You seem to have been having a field-day generally."
"I tell you," said Roger, "that you've been dying of sleeping sickness for five weeks. Look at your temperature chart. Look at my diary. After the atoxyl was lost, I tried every mortal thing we had. And nothing was any good. You were drowsing away to death for days. Don't you remember?"