Dr. Barton, as a nurse might work upon children upset by an explosion, took his pipe from his mouth, and began speaking. He said:
“Dr. MacArthur, I think it is your advice that we need, suh.”
The thing that cowed Dr. Peters, Paton and Hoffbein, was that Dr. Harrison had suffered no relapse. He sat firmly stroking his beard and looking alternately at each of them.
Dr. MacArthur, his blue eyes firmly defiant, began:
“The hospital has never been in so delicate a situation. I repeat that the matter must be handled with secrecy, tact, and sanity.
“You see, gentlemen, this hospital was endowed, it has been perpetuated for, and is famous as, a great teaching institution. When through any clumsiness of ours we have more beds than patients the hospital is doomed. Its great advantage has always been more patients than beds. D’y’see?”
Prissy’s green, Princeton’s lavender and Hoffbein’s liquid eyes were glued upon his face. Dr. Barton’s shoulders were hunched attentively.
“Now if we were to turn this situation over to the police, regardless of Dr. Harrison’s statements, we would automatically spread into every ward of every department, every newspaper in the country, the superstition of every negro within a thousand miles, the means of ruining, absolutely, your work, mine and that of all the medical men now resident and student here.
“Murder is a very horrible situation, but dooming the future of at least a thousand capable men is, in my opinion, worse, all oaths, notwithstanding. D’y’see?
“Whatever hysteria is manifested must not come from the staff, nor the blunders which so horrible an occurrence makes us likely to fall into.”