第 四 章 · The Case of Lady Sannox

. The Case of Lady Sannox

The relations between Douglas Stone and the notorious Lady Sannox were

very well known both among the fashionable circles of which she was a

brilliant member, and the scientific bodies which numbered him among

their most illustrious confreres. There was naturally, therefore, a

very widespread interest when it was announced one morning that the

lady had absolutely and for ever taken the veil, and that the world

would see her no more. When, at the very tail of this rumour, there

came the assurance that the celebrated operating surgeon, the man of

steel nerves, had been found in the morning by his valet, seated on one

side of his bed, smiling pleasantly upon the universe, with both legs

jammed into one side of his breeches and his great brain about as

valuable as a cap full of porridge, the matter was strong enough to

give quite a little thrill of interest to folk who had never hoped that

their jaded nerves were capable of such a sensation.

Douglas Stone in his prime was one of the most remarkable men in

England. Indeed, he could hardly be said to have ever reached his

prime, for he was but nine-and-thirty at the time of this little

incident. Those who knew him best were aware that famous as he was as

a surgeon, he might have succeeded with even greater rapidity in any of

a dozen lines of life. He could have cut his way to fame as a soldier,

struggled to it as an explorer, bullied for it in the courts, or built

it out of stone and iron as an engineer. He was born to be great, for

he could plan what another man dare not do, and he could do what

another man dare not plan. In surgery none could follow him. His

nerve, his judgement, his intuition, were things apart. Again and

again his knife cut away death, but grazed the very springs of life in

doing it, until his assistants were as white as the patient. His

energy, his audacity, his full-blooded self-confidence--does not the

memory of them still linger to the south of Marylebone Road and the

north of Oxford Street?

His vices were as magnificent as his virtues, and infinitely more

picturesque. Large as was his income, and it was the third largest of

all professional men in London, it was far beneath the luxury of his

living. Deep in his complex nature lay a rich vein of sensualism, at

the sport of which he placed all the prizes of his life. The eye, the

ear, the touch, the palate, all were his masters. The bouquet of old

vintages, the scent of rare exotics, the curves and tints of the

daintiest potteries of Europe, it was to these that the quick-running

stream of gold was transformed. And then there came his sudden mad

passion for Lady Sannox, when a single interview with two challenging

glances and a whispered word set him ablaze. She was the loveliest

woman in London and the only one to him. He was one of the handsomest

men in London, but not the only one to her. She had a liking for new

experiences, and was gracious to most men who wooed her. It may have

been cause or it may have been effect that Lord Sannox looked fifty,

though he was but six-and-thirty.

He was a quiet, silent, neutral-tinted man, this lord, with thin lips

and heavy eyelids, much given to gardening, and full of home-like

habits. He had at one time been fond of acting, had even rented a

theatre in London, and on its boards had first seen Miss Marion Dawson,

to whom he had offered his hand, his title, and the third of a county.

Since his marriage his early hobby had become distasteful to him. Even

in private theatricals it was no longer possible to persuade him to

exercise the talent which he had often showed that he possessed. He

was happier with a spud and a watering-can among his orchids and

chrysanthemums.

It was quite an interesting problem whether he was absolutely devoid of

sense, or miserably wanting in spirit. Did he know his lady's ways and

condone them, or was he a mere blind, doting fool? It was a point to be

discussed over the teacups in snug little drawing-rooms, or with the

aid of a cigar in the bow windows of clubs. Bitter and plain were the

comments among men upon his conduct. There was but one who had a good

word to say for him, and he was the most silent member in the

smoking-room. He had seen him break in a horse at the University, and

it seemed to have left an impression upon his mind.

But when Douglas Stone became the favourite all doubts as to Lord

Sannox's knowledge or ignorance were set for ever at rest. There was no

subterfuge about Stone. In his high-handed, impetuous fashion, he set

all caution and discretion at defiance. The scandal became notorious.

A learned body intimated that his name had been struck from the list of

its vice-presidents. Two friends implored him to consider his

professional credit. He cursed them all three, and spent forty guineas

on a bangle to take with him to the lady. He was at her house every

evening, and she drove in his carriage in the afternoons. There was

not an attempt on either side to conceal their relations; but there

came at last a little incident to interrupt them.

It was a dismal winter's night, very cold and gusty, with the wind

whooping in the chimneys and blustering against the window-panes. A

thin spatter of rain tinkled on the glass with each fresh sough of the

gale, drowning for the instant the dull gurgle and drip from the eaves.

Douglas Stone had finished his dinner, and sat by his fire in the

study, a glass of rich port upon the malachite table at his elbow. As

he raised it to his lips, he held it up against the lamplight, and

watched with the eye of a connoisseur the tiny scales of beeswing which

floated in its rich ruby depths. The fire, as it spurted up, threw

fitful lights upon his bald, clear-cut face, with its widely-opened

grey eyes, its thick and yet firm lips, and the deep, square jaw, which

had something Roman in its strength and its animalism. He smiled from

time to time as he nestled back in his luxurious chair. Indeed, he had

a right to feel well pleased, for, against the advice of six

colleagues, he had performed an operation that day of which only two

cases were on record, and the result had been brilliant beyond all

expectation. No other man in London would have had the daring to plan,

or the skill to execute, such a heroic measure.

But he had promised Lady Sannox to see her that evening and it was

already half-past eight. His hand was outstretched to the bell to

order the carriage when he heard the dull thud of the knocker. An

instant later there was the shuffling of feet in the hall, and the

sharp closing of a door.

"A patient to see you, sir, in the consulting room," said the butler.

"About himself?"

"No, sir; I think he wants you to go out."

"It is too late," cried Douglas Stone peevishly. "I won't go."

"This is his card, sir."

The butler presented it upon the gold salver which had been given to

his master by the wife of a Prime Minister.

"'Hamil Ali, Smyrna.' Hum! The fellow is a Turk, I suppose."

"Yes, sir. He seems as if he came from abroad, sir. And he's in a

terrible way."

"Tut, tut! I have an engagement. I must go somewhere else. But I'll

see him. Show him in here, Pim."

A few moments later the butler swung open the door and ushered in a

small and decrepit man, who walked with a bent back and with the

forward push of the face and blink of the eyes which goes with extreme

short sight. His face was swarthy, and his hair and beard of the

deepest black. In one hand he held a turban of white muslin striped

with red, in the other a small chamois-leather bag.

"Good evening," said Douglas Stone, when the butler had closed the

door. "You speak English, I presume?"

"Yes, sir. I am from Asia Minor, but I speak English when I speak

slow."

"You wanted me to go out, I understand?"

"Yes, sir. I wanted very much that you should see my wife."

"I could come in the morning, but I have an engagement which prevents

me from seeing your wife tonight."

The Turk's answer was a singular one. He pulled the string which

closed the mouth of the chamois-leather bag, and poured a flood of gold

on to the table.

"There are one hundred pounds there," said he, "and I promise you that

it will not take you an hour. I have a cab ready at the door."

Douglas Stone glanced at his watch. An hour would not make it too late

to visit Lady Sannox. He had been there later. And the fee was an

extraordinarily high one. He had been pressed by his creditors lately,

and he could not afford to let such a chance pass. He would go.

"What is the case?" he asked.

"Oh, it is so sad a one! So sad a one! You have not, perhaps heard of

the daggers of the Almohades?"

"Never."

"Ah, they are Eastern daggers of a great age and of a singular shape,

with the hilt like what you call a stirrup. I am a curiosity dealer,

you understand, and that is why I have come to England from Smyrna, but

next week I go back once more. Many things I brought with me, and I

have a few things left, but among them, to my sorrow, is one of these

daggers."

"You will remember that I have an appointment, sir," said the surgeon,

with some irritation; "pray confine yourself to the necessary details."

"You will see that it is necessary. Today my wife fell down in a faint

in the room in which I keep my wares, and she cut her lower lip upon

this cursed dagger of Almohades."

"I see," said Douglas Stone, rising. "And you wish me to dress the

wound?"

"No, no, it is worse than that."

"What then?"

"These daggers are poisoned."

"Poisoned!"

"Yes, and there is no man, East or West, who can tell now what is the

poison or what the cure. But all that is known I know, for my father

was in this trade before me, and we have had much to do with these

poisoned weapons."

"What are the symptoms?"

"Deep sleep, and death in thirty hours."

"And you say there is no cure. Why then should you pay me this

considerable fee?"

"No drug can cure, but the knife may."

"And how?"

"The poison is slow of absorption. It remains for hours in the wound."

"Washing, then, might cleanse it?"

"No more than in a snake bite. It is too subtle and too deadly."

"Excision of the wound, then?"

"That is it. If it be on the finger, take the finger off. So said my

father always. But think of where this wound is, and that it is my

wife. It is dreadful!"

But familiarity with such grim matters may take the finer edge from a

man's sympathy. To Douglas Stone this was already an interesting case,

and he brushed aside as irrelevant the feeble objections of the husband.

"It appears to be that or nothing," said he brusquely. "It is better

to lose a lip than a life."

"Ah, yes, I know that you are right. Well, well, it is kismet, and it

must be faced. I have the cab, and you will come with me and do this

thing."

Douglas Stone took his case of bistouries from a drawer, and placed it

with a roll of bandage and a compress of lint in his pocket. He must

waste no more time if he were to see Lady Sannox.

"I am ready," said he, pulling on his overcoat. "Will you take a glass

of wine before you go out into this cold air?"

His visitor shrank away, with a protesting hand upraised.

"You forget that I am a Mussulman, and a true follower of the Prophet,"

said he. "But tell me what is the bottle of green glass which you have

placed in your pocket?"

"It is chloroform."

"Ah, that also is forbidden to us. It is a spirit, and we make no use

of such things."

"What! You would allow your wife to go through an operation without an

anaesthetic?"

"Ah! she will feel nothing, poor soul. The deep sleep has already

come on, which is the first working of the poison. And then I have

given her of our Smyrna opium. Come, sir, for already an hour has

passed."

As they stepped out into the darkness, a sheet of rain was driven in

upon their faces, and the hall lamp, which dangled from the arm of a

marble Caryatid, went out with a fluff. Pim, the butler, pushed the

heavy door to, straining hard with his shoulder against the wind, while

the two men groped their way towards the yellow glare which showed

where the cab was waiting. An instant later they were rattling upon

their journey.

"Is it far?" asked Douglas Stone.

"Oh, no. We have a very little quiet place off the Euston Road."

The surgeon pressed the spring of his repeater and listened to the

little tings which told him the hour. It was a quarter past nine. He

calculated the distances, and the short time which it would take him to

perform so trivial an operation. He ought to reach Lady Sannox by ten

o'clock. Through the fogged windows he saw the blurred gas lamps

dancing past, with occasionally the broader glare of a shop front. The

rain was pelting and rattling upon the leathern top of the carriage,

and the wheels swashed as they rolled through puddle and mud. Opposite

to him the white headgear of his companion gleamed faintly through the

obscurity. The surgeon felt in his pockets and arranged his needles,

his ligatures and his safety-pins, that no time might be wasted when

they arrived. He chafed with impatience and drummed his foot upon the

floor.

But the cab slowed down at last and pulled up. In an instant Douglas

Stone was out, and the Smyrna merchant's toe was at his very heel.

"You can wait," said he to the driver.

It was a mean-looking house in a narrow and sordid street. The

surgeon, who knew his London well, cast a swift glance into the

shadows, but there was nothing distinctive--no shop, no movement,

nothing but a double line of dull, flat-faced houses, a double stretch

of wet flagstones which gleamed in the lamplight, and a double rush of

water in the gutters which swirled and gurgled towards the sewer

gratings. The door which faced them was blotched and discoloured, and

a faint light in the fan pane above, it served to show the dust and the

grime which covered it. Above in one of the bedroom windows, there was

a dull yellow glimmer. The merchant knocked loudly, and, as he turned

his dark face towards the light, Douglas Stone could see that it was

contracted with anxiety. A bolt was drawn, and an elderly woman with a

taper stood in the doorway, shielding the thin flame with her gnarled

hand.

"Is all well?" gasped the merchant.

"She is as you left her, sir."

"She has not spoken?"

"No, she is in a deep sleep."

The merchant closed the door, and Douglas Stone walked down the narrow

passage, glancing about him in some surprise as he did so. There was no

oil-cloth, no mat, no hat-rack. Deep grey dust and heavy festoons of

cobwebs met his eyes everywhere. Following the old woman up the

winding stair, his firm footfall echoed harshly through the silent

house. There was no carpet.

The bedroom was on the second landing. Douglas Stone followed the old

nurse into it, with the merchant at his heels. Here, at least, there

was furniture and to spare. The floor was littered and the corners

piled with Turkish cabinets, inlaid tables, coats of chain mail,

strange pipes, and grotesque weapons. A single small lamp stood upon a

bracket on the wall. Douglas Stone took it down, and picking his way

among the lumber, walked over to a couch in the corner, on which lay a

woman dressed in the Turkish fashion, with yashmak and veil. The lower

part of the face was exposed, and the surgeon saw a jagged cut which

zigzagged along the border of the under lip.

"You will forgive the yashmak," said the Turk. "You know our views

about women in the East."

But the surgeon was not thinking about the yashmak. This was no longer

a woman to him. It was a case. He stooped and examined the wound

carefully.

"There are no signs of irritation," said he. "We might delay the

operation until local symptoms develop."

The husband wrung his hands in uncontrollable agitation.

"Oh! sir, sir," he cried. "Do not trifle. You do not know. It is

deadly. I know, and I give you my assurance that an operation is

absolutely necessary. Only the knife can save her."

"And yet I am inclined to wait," said Douglas Stone.

"That is enough," the Turk cried, angrily. "Every minute is of

importance, and I cannot stand here and see my wife allowed to sink.

It only remains for me to give you my thanks for having come, and to

call in some other surgeon before it is too late."

Douglas Stone hesitated. To refund that hundred pounds was no pleasant

matter. But of course if he left the case he must return the money.

And if the Turk were right and the woman died, his position before a

coroner might be an embarrassing one.

"You have had personal experience of this poison?" he asked.

"I have."

"And you assure me that an operation is needful."

"I swear it by all that I hold sacred."

"The disfigurement will be frightful."

"I can understand that the mouth will not be a pretty one to kiss."

Douglas Stone turned fiercely upon the man. The speech was a brutal

one. But the Turk has his own fashion of talk and of thought, and

there was no time for wrangling. Douglas Stone drew a bistoury from

his case, opened it and felt the keen straight edge with his

forefinger. Then he held the lamp closer to the bed. Two dark eyes

were gazing up at him through the slit in the yashmak. They were all

iris, and the pupil was hardly to be seen.

"You have given her a very heavy dose of opium."

"Yes, she has had a good dose."

He glanced again at the dark eyes which looked straight at his own.

They were dull and lustreless, but, even as he gazed, a little shifting

sparkle came into them, and the lips quivered.

"She is not absolutely unconscious," said he.

"Would it not be well to use the knife while it will be painless?"

The same thought had crossed the surgeon's mind. He grasped the

wounded lip with his forceps, and with two swift cuts he took out a

broad V-shaped piece. The woman sprang up on the couch with a dreadful

gurgling scream. Her covering was torn from her face. It was a face

that he knew. In spite of that protruding upper lip and that slobber

of blood, it was a face that he knew, She kept on putting her hand up

to the gap and screaming. Douglas Stone sat down at the foot of the

couch with his knife and his forceps. The room was whirling round, and

he had felt something go like a ripping seam behind his ear. A

bystander would have said that his face was the more ghastly of the

two. As in a dream, or as if he had been looking at something at the

play, he was conscious that the Turk's hair and beard lay upon the

table, and that Lord Sannox was leaning against the wall with his hand

to his side, laughing silently. The screams had died away now, and the

dreadful head had dropped back again upon the pillow, but Douglas Stone

still sat motionless, and Lord Sannox still chuckled quietly to himself.

"It was really very necessary for Marion, this operation," said he,

"not physically, but morally, you know, morally."

Douglas Stone stooped for yards and began to play with the fringe of

the coverlet. His knife tinkled down upon the ground, but he still

held the forceps and something more.

"I had long intended to make a little example," said Lord Sannox,

suavely. "Your note of Wednesday miscarried, and I have it here in my

pocket-book. I took some pains in carrying out my idea. The wound, by

the way, was from nothing more dangerous than my signet ring."

He glanced keenly at his silent companion, and cocked the small

revolver which he held in his coat pocket. But Douglas Stone was still

picking at the coverlet.

"You see you have kept your appointment after all," said Lord Sannox.

And at that Douglas Stone began to laugh. He laughed long and loudly.

But Lord Sannox did not laugh now. Something like fear sharpened and

hardened his features. He walked from the room, and he walked on

tiptoe. The old woman was waiting outside.

"Attend to your mistress when she awakes," said Lord Sannox.

Then he went down to the street. The cab was at the door, and the

driver raised his hand to his hat.

"John," said Lord Sannox, "you will take the doctor home first. He will

want leading downstairs, I think. Tell his butler that he has been

taken ill at a case."

"Very good, sir."

"Then you can take Lady Sannox home."

"And how about yourself, sir?"

"Oh, my address for the next few months will be Hotel di Roma, Venice.

Just see that the letters are sent on. And tell Stevens to exhibit all

the purple chrysanthemums next Monday, and to wire me the result."