Lenox was eager to share his discoveries at the Yard, but he had heard too many stories of men and women sustaining blows to the head and dozing off comfortably, only to remain in that slumber forever after.
“St. Bart’s,” Lenox told the cab driver. “King Henry Gate.”
“What is that?” Hollis asked.
Lenox was already looking at his notes. “Hospital,” he said, not looking up.
It was more than just a hospital to many. St. Bartholomew’s had stood in the same spot since the early 1100s; Harvey had discovered and delineated the circulatory system there, perhaps the greatest accomplishment a British scientist had ever made.
But to Lenox it was first and foremost the place where he had an acquaintance who would be awake and helpful. Lemuel Dominic was a surgeon Lenox had consulted professionally. He kept eccentric hours, luckily, working and seeing patients between four in the afternoon and four in the morning.
As the cab picked up speed, Hollis packed a pipe and smoked it in thoughtful silence. No doubt Gilman was on his mind.
After some time, Lenox addressed him. “Can you think of a reason anyone would want to kill the three of you?”
“Yes,” said Hollis briefly, an answer that plainly showed how naïve he thought the question.
“Do you have any person in mind? Or group?”
“I have never given a speech in my home country without receiving a death threat beforehand.”
That stopped Lenox short, and he contemplated the dimensions of the problem before him with growing dismay.
They arrived at St. Bart’s. The porter at the Henry Gate—above which stood London’s last remaining statue of Henry the Eighth—knew Lenox, and he and Hollis were seen straight to the North Ward. Lenox led Hollis to Dominic’s door, halfway down a hushed wooden corridor.
“Lenox,” said Dominic when he answered the knock, taciturn as ever, with keen hooded eyes. “Good evening.”
“Good evening, Dominic. Are you busy?”
“Unoccupied.”
He was a short, fat person, an expert in tumors. “This man has a head wound,” said Lenox. “He is an American. I would take it kindly if you looked at him.”
Dominic glanced at Hollis, then back at Lenox.
“A quick word first, if you would.”
“Of course.”
Lenox went into the bright chamber and closed the door behind him—and there heard, to his astonishment, Dominic say that he would not treat a Negro. Lenox expressed his surprise. Dominic said that he was not expert in their kind, to which Lenox replied that it was no doubt like treating any other adult male, upon which Dominic said that Lenox should know better than to be so coarse in his distinctions. Coarse! Lenox answered that he had heard of an oath that doctors took whose contents eluded him now—could Dominic remind him—named for Hippocrates he thought—and the conversation ended soon thereafter, without any great amiability on either side.
Lenox came back into the hallway. “He is in the midst of a dissection,” he told Hollis. He looked up and down the corridor. “We will have to find someone else.”
Hollis looked as if he knew full well the meaning of the word “dissection” and merely nodded. He did wince, though. The blood on his bandage had reddened.
The detective, increasingly alarmed, asked Hollis to wait upon a bench. He walked quickly back to the stairwell, his footsteps making a loud cracking racket through the empty building. There, he consulted a list on a wooden board of every doctor by his office number.
He scanned it carefully, until he stopped at a name he recognized. It was a very slender acquaintance. Still, it might work.
They found office 119 after two left turns, and Lenox knocked on it tentatively. After a moment it opened, and a tall, extremely handsome fellow, with large dark brown eyes and hair fashionably windswept, stood before them in a white coat.
“Good evening,” he said.
“Dr. Thomas McConnell?” Lenox asked.
“That is I.”
“You will not recall me, I think, but we met twice—perhaps two years ago, or just a bit more. You were kind enough to come to the country to see my father, and then we encountered each other at Lady Hamilton’s ball. Charles Lenox.”
“Charles Lenox! Yes, I remember, of course.” He was too delicate—or perhaps too callous, with a doctor it could be difficult to tell—to ask about Lenox’s father, who had died of the illness that had caused them to enlist McConnell as a specialist, though through no fault whatsoever of McConnell’s own. “In fact, I saw Lady Lucia Chatham the other day.”
“Engaged, I hear,” said Lenox, with a smile. “Listen—I know it is very awkward, my showing up on your doorstep, but Mr. Hollis here has a head wound. We called upon Dr. Dominic, but—”
There was no need to continue, however. Before a few words of this short speech had emerged from Lenox’s mouth, McConnell had already nodded, shaken Hollis’s hand, and begun ushering them into the small round chamber that evidently served as his consulting room. He seated them in a pair of dark chairs and sat down opposite, leaning forward on the edge of his chair so that only the balls of his feet touched the floor.
“Have you seen a doctor, sir?” he asked Hollis.
“A Quaker doctor, sir.”
Lenox had observed that there were scientific journals and a cup of tea upon McConnell’s desk. “You are sure we are not interrupting you?”
“Only in the most welcome way—interrupting the sheer boredom of maintaining one’s professional competence. That is, I should add, welcome, if we can alleviate Mr. Hollis’s suffering.”
McConnell moved Hollis to a taller chair. Lenox offered to leave, but both men said he could stay. With long, subtle fingers, the doctor unfurled the bandage, sponging some clear liquid from a white basin nearby onto the wrapping where it stuck.
The wound looked considerably worse than Lenox had expected.
“Goodness,” he said under his breath.
“These Quaker doctors mean very well,” the surgeon said, carefully gazing at the wound. “But sometimes their good intentions outpace their medical ability. Still, between the two, good intentions and good medicine, there is often nearly an equal need.”
Dominic had proved this true, certainly. “I really do thank you, McConnell,” Lenox said.
The surgeon studied the wound for what seemed a very long time. At last, he said, “This wound will do very well, Mr. Hollis. The bone is unfractured. You have not lost a worrying quantity of blood—or rather, you have lost a worrying quantity for yourself, of course, but not for your medical outlook.”
“You will patch it up?” asked Lenox.
“I will. First he shall have this laudanum.” The Scot brought forth a small bottle of tincture. Hollis took two drops on his tongue. In the pain of the unwrapping of the wound he had closed his eyes and barely opened them since; he was sweating heavily. “Then I shall ask him to rest somewhere. This sofa is free.”
“But ought he not to stay awake?”
“On the contrary, nothing would do better than for him to sleep twelve or fifteen hours. There is no hemorrhage within the cerebellum.”
Lenox looked at McConnell carefully. “And you are sure that he can sleep here? I would not dream of imposing upon you. Yet I fear it is not safe for him to return to his hotel.”
“Ah, your profession!” McConnell nodded his head firmly. He was already rewrapping the wound, quickly and expertly. “Yes. He is your friend—he shall stay here. Does that suit you, Mr. Hollis?”
The American muttered something that sounded like a yes. The laudanum had taken hold even in this short stretch of time, combining no doubt with fatigue, shock, and vigilance to render him stupefied. He allowed himself to be guided to a long and comfortable blue sofa in the corner of McConnell’s office. There he lay down. McConnell found a loosely woven military blanket in his cabinet and placed it over Hollis.
Within what seemed like thirty seconds, perhaps less, he was asleep. “I am deeply in your debt,” Lenox said, voice low.
McConnell grinned. “Yes, to the tune of nine shillings. However, since we are not in Harley Street, where I have my clinical practice, but at the hospital, we shall waive it.”
“I insist upon paying,” said Lenox, reaching for his pocket.
McConnell put a hand out. “Go further and you shall insult me.”
Lenox stopped. “Then you must accept my gratitude. But can you really leave him here?”
“Yes. I shall be here another hour or two. When I go I shall write a note for the nurse on the wards. You may leave one for Hollis if you wish, too. They will see that he gets it.”
This was just what they did. Then Lenox, thanking McConnell with quiet but fervent gratitude once more—Hollis was in a deep sleep—said it might be vitally important to him to go to Scotland Yard, that time was of the utmost importance, and McConnell urged him away, with his good wishes and his assurances that the next day when Hollis woke up they would find him a bed on the ward.