CHAPTER SEVEN
I thought of many things during the long vigil that followed. The isolation ward harboured six patients, but Petrie had been given accommodation in a tiny private room at one end. The corresponding room at the other end was the sanctum of Sister Therese.
It was a lonely spot, and very silent. I heard the sister moving about in the adjoining ward, and presently she entered quietly, a fragile little woman, her pale face looking childishly small framed in the stiff white headdress of her order. Deftly and all but noiselessly she went about her duties; and, watching her, I wondered, as I had often wondered before, from whence came the unquestioning faith which upheld such as Sister Therese and in which they found adequate reward for a life of service.
“You are not afraid of infection, M. Sterling?” she asked, her voice very low and gentle.
“Not at all, Sister. In my job I have to risk it.”
“What do you do?”
“Hunt for new species of plants for the Botanical Society—and orchids for the market.”
“But how fascinating! As a matter of fact, there is no danger of infection at this stage.”
“So I am told by Dr. Cartier.”
“It is new to us, this disease. But it is tragic that Dr. Petrie should fall a victim. However, as you see—”
She pointed.
“The stigmata?”
Sister Therese shuddered.
“It is so irreligious! But Dr. Cartier, I know, calls this mark the black stigmata. Yes—it does not increase. Dr. Petrie may conquer. He is a wonderful man. You will moisten his poor lips from time to time? I am praying that he may be spared to us. Goodnight, M. Sterling. Ring for me if he moves.”
She withdrew in her gentle, silent way, leaving me to my thoughts. And by some queer mental alchemy these became transmuted into thoughts of Fleurette. I found myself contemplating in a sort of cold horror the idea of Fleurette infected with this foul plague—her delicate beauty marred, her strong young body contorted by the work of some loathsome, unclassified bacillus.
And then I fell to thinking about those who had contracted this thing, and to considering what Nayland Smith had told me. What association was there to explain a common enmity between London dock labourers and Dr. Petrie?
I stared at him as the thought crossed my mind. One of the strangest symptoms of this horror which threatened France was the period of complete coma preceding the end. Petrie looked like a dead man.
A searching wind, coming down from the Alps, had begun to blow at sunset. The pines, some of which almost overhung the lonely building, hushed and whispered insidiously. I construed their whispering into a repetition of the words “Fleurette—Derceto...”
If dear old Petrie survived the crisis, I told myself, tomorrow should find me once more on the beach of Ste Claire de la Roche. I might have misjudged Fleurette. But even if she were the mistress of Mahdi Bey, she was very young and so not past praying for.
I had just formed this resolution when a new sound intruded upon the silence of the sickroom.
There was only one window—high in the wall which marked the end of the place. As I sat near the foot of Petrie’s bed, this window was above on my left.
And the sound, a faint scraping, seemed to come from there.
I listened to the hushing of the pines, thinking that the wind had grown higher and that some outstretched branch must be touching the wall. But the wind seemed to have decreased, and the whisper, “Fleurette—Derceto,” had become a scarcely audible sigh.
Raising my head, I looked up...
A yellow hand, the fingers crooked in a clutching movement—a threat it seemed—showed for a moment, then disappeared, outside the window!
Springing to my feet, I stared wildly. How long had I been sitting there, dreaming, since Sister Therese had gone? I had no idea. My imagination pictured such an evil, mask-like face as I had seen at the Villa Jasmin—peering in at that high window.
One of the Dacoits (the name was vaguely familiar, although I had never been in Burma) referred to by Nayland Smith must be watching the place!
Was this what he had feared? Was this why I had been left on guard?
What did it mean?
I could not believe that Dr. Petrie had ever wronged any man. Who, then, was hounding him to death, and what was his motive?
Literally holding my breath, I listened. But there was no repetition of the scraping sound. The climber—the window was twelve feet above ground level—had dropped silently at the moment that I sprang from my chair.
To rush out and search was obviously not in orders. My job was to sit tight. I was pledged to it.
But the incident had painted a new complexion on my duties.
I watched that high window keenly and for a long time. Then, as I was on the point of sitting down, a slight sound brought me upright at a bound. I realized that my nerves were badly overtuned.
The door opened and Sister Therese came in, in her unobtrusive, almost apologetic way.
“A lady has called to see Dr. Petrie,” she said.
“To see Dr. Petrie!”
“How could I refuse her, M. Sterling?” Sister Therese asked gently. “She is his wife!” The little sister glanced wistfully at the unconscious man. “And she is such a beautiful woman.”
“Great heavens!” I groaned. “This is going to be almost unendurable. Is she very—disturbed, Sister?”
Sister Therese shook her head, smiling sadly.
“Not at all. She has great courage.”
Just as poor Petrie had feared—his wife had come from Cairo—to find him... a doomed man.
“I suppose she must come in. But his appearance will be a frightful shock to her.”
Anticipating a tragic interview, I presently turned to meet Mrs. Petrie, as Sister Therese showed her into the room. She was, I saw, tall and slender, having an indolent grace of bearing totally different from affectation. She was draped in a long wrap of some dark fur beneath which showed the edge of a green dress. Bare, ivory ankles peeped below its fringe and she wore high-heeled green sandals with gold straps.
She had features of almost classic chiselling and perfectly moulded lips. But her eyes were truly remarkable. They were incredibly long, of the true almond shape, and brilliant as jewels. By reason of the fact that Mrs. Petrie wore a little green beret-like hat set on one side of her glossy head, from which depended a figured gold veil, I could not determine the exact colour of those strange eyes: the veil just covered them.
Her complete self-possession reassured me. She glanced at Petrie, and then, as Sister Therese silently retired:
“It is very good of you, Mr. Sterling,” she said—and her voice had an indolent, soothing quality in keeping with her personality—“to allow me to make this visit.”
She seated herself in a chair which I placed for her beside Petrie’s bed.
So this was “Karâmanèh”? I had not forgotten that strange name murmured by Nayland Smith as he had bent over Petrie. “The most beautiful woman I have ever known...”
And that Mrs. Petrie was beautiful none could deny; yet for some reason her appearance surprised me. I had not been prepared for a woman of this type. Truth to tell, although I didn’t recognize the fact then, I had subconsciously given Mrs. Petrie the attributes of Fleurette—a flower-like, tender loveliness wholly removed from the patrician yet exotic elegance of this woman who sat looking at the unconscious man.
Having heard of her passionate love for the doctor, I was surprised, too, by her studied self-possession. It was admirable, but, in a devoted wife, almost uncanny.
“I could do no less, Mrs. Petrie,” I replied. “It is very brave of you to come.”
She was bending forward, watching the sick man.
“Is there—any hope?” she asked.
“There is every hope, Mrs. Petrie. In other cases which the doctors have met with, the appearance of the purple shadow has meant the end.”
“But in this case?”
She looked at me, her wonderful eyes so bright that I thought she was suppressing tears.
“In Petrie’s case, the progress of the disease has been checked— temporarily, at any rate.”
“How wonderful,” she whispered, “and how strange.”
She bent over him again. Her movements were feline in their indolent grace. One slender ivory hand held the cloak in place; the long nails were varnished to a jewel-like brightness. I wondered how these two had met, and how such markedly different types had ever become lovers.
Mrs. Petrie raised her eyes to me again.
“Is Dr. Cartier following some different treatment in—my husband’s case?”
The nearly imperceptible pause had not escaped me. I supposed that a wave of emotion had threatened to overcome her when she found that name upon her lips and realized that the man himself tottered on the brink of the Valley.
“Yes, Mrs. Petrie; a treatment of your husband’s known as ‘654.’”
“Prepared, I suppose, by Dr. Cartier?”
“No—prepared by Petrie himself just before he was seized with illness.”
“But Dr. Cartier, of course, knows the formula?”
That caressing voice possessed some odd quality of finality; it was like listening to Fate speaking. Not to reply to any question so put to one would have been a task akin to closing one’s ears to the song of the Sirens. And the darkly fringed eyes, which, now, owing to some accident of reflected light, I thought were golden, emphasized the soft command.
Indeed, I was on the point of answering truthfully, that no one but Petrie knew the formula, when an instinct of compassion gave me strength to defy that powerful urge. Why should I admit so cruel a truth?
“I cannot say,” I replied, and knew that I spoke the words unnaturally.
“But of course it will be somewhere in my husband’s possession? No doubt in his laboratory?”
Her anxiety—although there was no trace of tremor in her velvety tones—was nevertheless unmistakable.
“No doubt, Mrs. Petrie,” I said reassuringly—and spoke now with greater conviction, since I really believed that the formula must be somewhere among Petrie’s papers.
She murmured something in a low voice—and, standing up, moved to the head of the bed.
Whereupon, my difficulties began. For, as Mrs. Petrie bent over the pillow, I remembered the charge which had been put upon me, remembered Nayland Smith’s words:
“You are not to allow a soul to touch him—”
I got up swiftly, stepped around the foot of the bed, and joined Mrs. Petrie where she stood.
“Whatever you do,” I said, “don’t touch him!”
Slowly she stood upright; infinitely slowly and gracefully. She turned and looked into my eyes.
“Why?” she asked.
“Because—” I hesitated: what could I say? “Because of the possibility of infection.”
“Please don’t worry about that, Mr. Sterling. There is no possibility of infection at this stage. Sister Therese told me so.”
“But she may be wrong,” I urged. “Really, I can’t allow you to take the risk.”
Perhaps my principles ride me to death; I have been told that they do. But I had pledged my word that no one should touch Petrie, and I meant to stick to it. Logically, I could think of no reason why this woman who loved him should not stroke his hair, as I thought she had been about to do. It was almost inhuman to forbid it. Yet, by virtue of Sir Denis’s trust in me, forbid it I must.
“It may be difficult,” I remembered saying to him. How difficult it was to be, I had not foreseen!
“Surely,” she said, and her soft voice held no note of anger, “the risk is mine?”
Mrs. Petrie bent again over the pillow. She was on the point of resting those slender, indolent hands on Petrie’s shoulders.
She intended, I surmised, to kiss his parched lips...