Parker Steel roused himself at last, forced back his shoulders, and walked slowly towards the door. He turned the key in the lock, and stood listening a moment before picking up a hand-mirror from among the multifarious books and papers on the table. Returning to the window, he peered at the reflection of his own face, furtively, as though dreading what he might discover. The sallow skin was blemishless as yet. Not a spot or blur showed from the line of the hair to the clean curve of the well-shaven chin.
In another minute Parker Steel was turning over the leaves of his journal with impetuous fingers. He worked back page by page, running a finger down each column of names, stopping ever and again to recollect and reconsider. It was on a page dated “February 12th” that he discovered an entry that gave him the final pause.
“Mrs. Rattan, 10 Ford Street. Partus, 5 A.M.”
A foot-note had been added at the bottom of the page, a foot-note whose details were significant to the point of proof.
Parker Steel threw the book upon the table.
“Good Lord!”
He looked round him like a man who has taken poison unwittingly, and whose brain refuses to act under the paralyzing pressure of fear. He, Parker Steel, a—! Physician and egoist that he was, he could not bring himself to think the word, to brand himself with the poor fools who crowd the hospitals of great cities. The very vision, a hundred visions such as he had seen in the dingy “out-patient rooms” of old, made the instinct of cleanliness in him sicken and recoil. For Parker Steel had much of the delicate niceness of a cat. This sense of unutterable pollution struck at his vanity and his self-respect.
He moved close to the window, and stood staring over the wire blind into the garden.
Was it not possible that he might be mistaken? He could consult an expert. And yet in the inmost corners of his heart he knew that the truth was merciless towards him.