Three days later, Stark called at my quarters in the late evening to inform me that a suitable cholera specimen had now been delivered to the laboratory.
Although I had known this moment would come, I wasn’t prepared for its arrival. I stared across my room at the small window. The knowledge that ordinary life bustled on behind the dark rectangle gave me a little strength.
‘How has it been delivered?’ I asked and it, it, it echoed in my brain, bouncing off cold walls like the shrieking of bats.
‘Female from Dundee, delivered in a brougham,’ answered Stark in a bored telegram style. I made a mental note — Dundee was more than four hundred miles north. How far did the Club’s tentacles reach?
‘The cabby is a reliable man. We have used him for other…tasks.’ Stark scratched his chin, lost in thoughts, and I sensed the gaping cleft within the man who did not quite trust his young colleague but had been ordered to share sensitive information. ‘He was well paid and instructed not to listen to any noise she made. We told him she is insane and seriously sick,’ he explained. ‘The man must have whipped his horses like the devil to get to London in such a short time!’
He chuckled and clapped his hands in delight.
I felt hate boiling in my chest. Slowly, I took a deep breath, told my heart to shut up and my fists to uncurl. In my brain, though, I went berserk: I would beat Stark unconscious and tie his arms and legs with a rope. Then I would infect him with cholera and wait a few days. After the disease had turned him into an intestine-expelling wreck, I would leave him outside in the cold, lying in his own shit and vomit, without food, water, or even a consoling word for his remaining days. A trial would be the least thing Stark would have to worry about.
Fighting for the appropriate amount of curiosity and ease in my voice, I asked, ‘Dundee, you say? That’s far away. Who prepared her for the transfer?’
Here, he stopped for a few moments, obviously pondering whether he was allowed to share this information, too. After a moment, he gave in. ‘A colleague from the Dundee School of Medicine.’
I made another mental note. The Club had a medical doctor working for them so far away from London. How much farther did they reach?
‘Did you take precautions?’ I enquired.
‘Of course we did!’ he cried indignantly. ‘She has no family; no one will miss her. The driver believes she will receive special treatment at our school.’ A smile played around his angler fish death trap. ‘Do not worry yourself, Dr Kronberg — no one will ever know.’ He grabbed my shoulder and squeezed it lightly.
How a man could exude so much hypocrisy and not drop dead of shame was a conundrum to me. ‘Excellent!’ I replied. ‘Has the cab been cleaned thoroughly?’ Focusing on avoiding the transmission of cholera and preventing the worst was my dangerously thin connection to sanity. My heart ached like a rotten tooth.
‘Certainly!’ exclaimed Stark, letting go of my shoulder to wave his hand. ‘Its interior was disinfected by your assistants. They also cleansed themselves and are now using your new invention — those masks — in addition to coats and gloves when they deal with the woman.’
I gave him an approving nod and walked over to the door. ‘I will have to extract the germs before or right after the subject dies,’ I said and grabbed my coat from the hanger. Stark did the same, and together we took a hansom to the medical school.
A few minutes later, we entered my laboratory. On the floor lay a soiled and frail-looking woman, half covered by a thin blanket. Although she was too weak to move, her hands were bound behind her back.
I felt myself falling apart. I knew I had to remain here, appearing calm and calculating. But all I wanted was to run away and scream. Quietly I inhaled and pulled myself back together. When we approached her, I knew she was already dying. Her breathing was so shallow, I barely heard it.
‘Leave me alone. You don’t want to watch this,’ I said. Stark appeared to have the exact same thought.
***
When I untied her hands, her ribcage began to heave convulsively. She opened her eyes in panic. Her unsteady gaze found me kneeling next to her. She opened her mouth, but was unable to speak. Her eyes were pleading. I ripped off my gloves and took her cold and shrivelled hands into mine, as though I could give her enough of my warmth and bring her back to life.
‘I am so sorry,’ I choked.
Her legs were twitching; the loss of fluids and minerals was causing her muscles to contract uncontrollably and painfully. And I sensed it then, and wished I could be the one to be taken away now. How ridiculous. No one could haggle with death.
I took both her hands into one of mine and stretched to take a bottle of ether from the shelf above me. I poured a large amount onto a handkerchief. She smelled it, and I gazed down at her, asking for permission. She smiled weakly and I pressed the stinking cloth against her mouth and caressed her soiled hair until long after her heart had given up fluttering.
***
I disinfected my hands, arms and face; put my gloves on, my mask, and rubber apron. Then I inserted a narrow tube into the woman’s rectum, connected the other end to a large syringe, and extracted about a quarter of an ounce of dirty greenish fluid.
Carefully, I spread drops of it onto fresh culture medium my assistants had prepared. Half of the Petri dishes were kept under the exclusion of oxygen; the other half with air contact. I wasn’t certain whether cholera germs grew under oxic conditions.
I poured the remaining fluid into a beaker and heated it to eighty degrees Celsius for twenty minutes. After it had cooled down, I fed it to half the mice and rabbits and marked them by shaving a bit of fur off their bellies. No one would notice, I hoped. With extraordinary luck, I might have a cholera vaccine ready in a few days without the Club’s knowledge. Perhaps it could help save a few lives. Perhaps it could pay for what I’d done.
After I washed and disinfected my hands, I prepared a letter — a small piece of parchment in a cheap envelope — that would be mailed the next morning to Mr Sherlock Holmes, 221B Baker Street:
Guilty of abduction, torture, and neglect of an unidentified female cholera victim, deceased today at London Medical School: Dr Gregory Stark, Dr Jarell Bowden, Assistant Mr Daniel Strowbridge, Assistant Mr Edison Bonsell, and an unknown medical doctor from the Dundee School of Medicine. Guilty of murder of the same woman: Dr Anton Kronberg.