Prissy’s offer even in the noontide sun would have come in a high treble and over the telephone and under the circumstances it didn’t sound very convincing.
However, after they had both bathed, both felt her death had purified them, both inserted their teeth, both had called MacArthur and requested a meeting minus the Sterlings.
It had left them a little shaky ... but now that Dr. MacArthur was beginning to speak, Prissy nodded to Princeton who tiptoed to the door and closed it. They felt they had been justified in the action they had taken.
Neither Sterling was present.
“Gentlemen,” Dr. MacArthur’s voice was measured and low, “Rose Standish is dead. She was murdered last night while a patient in Bed 11, Ward B, of Medicine Clinic. An injection of coniine. She went on that ward to save your reputation and mine. To lift the hospital out of terror ... and she is dead, and we are....”
“I was against it from the first,” Princeton began clearing himself with the rapidity of a condemned schoolboy.
Nobody paid him the slightest attention. Prissy blushed, and Hoffbein squirmed.
“We are faced,” Dr. MacArthur’s blue eyes had taken on their fighting steeliness, “with the blackest day the Elijah Wilson has ever seen. With the fact that no patient anywhere is safe in any bed of the institution ... with the responsibility of catching a murderer within our walls. A person who has committed two untraceable, two traceable murders. D’y’see? Gentlemen, I ask your advice.”
Princeton Peters and Prissy Paton stared at Dr. Hoffbein and he nodded ... with his eyelids, and Princeton rose.
“To put it plainly, straightly and to the point, MacArthur, it is one thing to protect your professional colleagues, but after all our Hippocratic oath binds us first to the protection of our patients.