"What does Gordon think of her condition?" Richard asked, as he eyed Sophie's burden with a little shrinking.
"Doctor Gordon couldn't come," she answered abstractedly as she looked around and gave the servant some directions about keeping a bountiful supply of water that had been boiled, "there was a wreck on the road that he is surgeon for—it didn't amount to much, but still he had to be there, so he telephoned Doctor Cooley that this young colleague of his whom he sent to do the operation is thoroughly competent—it seems that they operate together a great deal. I didn't catch the young doctor's name when he was introduced—and I've been too busy since to ask."
"Doctor Morgan," I said, feeling sure that Doctor Gordon would send no one but Alfred on a case like this.
"Doctor Morgan—the devil it is!" Richard's voice burst out so suddenly and so fiercely that I turned and looked at him in amazement. Then, for the first time, I realized how easy it might be to be afraid of him. Fierce and sudden as the words were, they were spoken in his deep, even voice, and not a muscle of his face showed the intense fury which I felt that he was laboring under. It was a cold, cruel anger, and it showed only in his eyes. They were glittering like two sharp-pointed steel blades. "Doctor Morgan here—and you knew all the time that he was coming!"
He looked at me so accusingly that Sophie sensed the point of the situation at once, although she had never heard Alfred's name mentioned before; and she broke in with a light laugh.
"Why, he didn't know himself that he was coming until ten minutes before train time. It was too late even to find a nurse to bring with him, so I am going to help in the operation."
Her words had the effect of quieting, in a measure, this insane suspicion of Richard's; and he and I followed her up the broad staircase. She led the way into the room which had been hastily divested of its rich furnishings and transformed into a semblance of an operating-room; and we two followed automatically. Sophie passed in and began busying herself about the preparations, but just inside the doorway we stopped.
Standing in the middle of the floor, near the end of a long table upon which had been placed several bowls of water, some clear, others light blue, his top shirt off and his arms up to his elbows thickly coated over with a soft lather, was Alfred. Another young fellow, whom I afterward learned was a local physician, stood near the table; and he too was busily "scrubbing up." As we came into the room Alfred bade Sophie hurry up with her own preparations.
"Would you object to hearing a word from me before your manipulations go further?" Richard's voice broke in, after the briefest and most perfunctory of greetings, which fortunately were divested of any hypocritical handshaking on account of Alfred's green soapiness. "I understand that our family physician, Doctor Cooley, telephoned to the city for Doctor Gordon to come down here and operate upon my sister."
"Doctor Gordon received the message, but was detained by a small wreck on the Eastern," Alfred said quietly, rinsing the soap-suds from his hands and motioning Sophie to drop another bichloride tablet into the next bowl of water. "He sent me to do the work."