Suppose he turned informer? Could he set a price,
and that price Lily? But he discarded that.
He was not selling now, he was earning. He
would set himself right first, and—provided
the government got the leaders before those leaders
got him, as they would surely try to do—he
would have earned something, surely.
Lily had come to him once when he called. She
might come again, when he had earned her.
Doyle sat back in his chair and watched him.
He saw that he had gone to pieces under defeat, and
men did strange things at those times. With
uncanny shrewdness he gauged Akers’ reaction;
his loss of confidence and, he surmised, his loyalty.
He would follow his own interest now, and if he thought
that it lay in turning informer, he might try it.
But it would take courage.
When the conference broke up Doyle was sure of where
his man stood. He was not worried. They
did not need Akers any longer. He had been a
presentable tool, a lay figure to give the organization
front, and they had over-rated him, at that.
He had failed them. Doyle, watching him contemptuously,
realized in him his own fallacious judgment, and hated
Akers for proving him wrong.
Outside the building Doyle drew the Russian aside,
and spoke to him. Ross started, then grinned.
“You’re wrong,” he said. “He
won’t try it. But of course he may, and
we’ll see that he doesn’t get away with
it.”
From that time on Louis Akers was under espionage.
Doctor Smalley was by way of achieving a practice.
During his morning and evening office hours he had
less and less time to read the papers and the current
magazines in his little back office, or to compare
the month’s earnings, visit by visit, with the
same month of the previous year.
He took to making his hospital rounds early in the
morning, rather to the outrage of various head nurses,
who did not like the staff to come a-visiting until
every counterpane was drawn stiff and smooth, every
bed corner a geometrical angle, every patient washed
and combed and temperatured, and in the exact center
of the bed.
Interns were different. They were like husbands.
They came and went, seeing things at their worst
as well as at their best, but mostly at their worst.
Like husbands, too, they developed a sort of philosophy
as to the early morning, and would only make occasional
remarks, such as:
“Cyclone struck you this morning, or anything?”
Doctor Smalley, being a bachelor, was entirely blind
to the early morning deficiencies of his wards.
Besides, he was young and had had a cold shower and
two eggs and various other things, and he saw the
world at eight A.M. as a good place. He would
get into his little car, whistling, and driving through
the market square he would sometimes stop and buy
a bag of apples for the children’s ward, or
a bunch of fall flowers. Thus armed, it was impossible
for the most austere of head nurses to hate him.
