Six Against the Yard Read online

  ‘I’ll do it!’ cried Walter, eagerly. ‘Please, sir, let it be me! I’d give all the blood in my body for Mr. Drury. I’ve been with him fifteen years, Doctor——’

  ‘Now, now,’ said the doctor.

  ‘I’d sacrifice my life for Mr. Drury——’

  ‘Yes, I daresay,’ said the doctor with a resigned look at the constable, ‘but there’s no question of that. Where do people get these ideas? Out of the papers, I suppose. Nobody’s being asked to sacrifice any lives. We only want a pint or so of blood—trifling affair for a healthy man. It won’t make the slightest difference to you—do you good, I shouldn’t wonder. My dear sir, don’t excite yourself so much. I know you’re willing—very naturally—but if you haven’t the right kind of blood, you’re no good to me.’

  ‘I’m very strong,’ said Walter, palpitating. ‘Never had a day’s illness.’

  ‘It’s nothing to do with your general health,’ said the doctor, a little impatiently. ‘It’s a thing you’re born with. I gather there is no relation of the patient’s handy? … What? Wife, sister and son in Sussex—well, that’s rather a long way off. I’ll test the two ambulance men first, but unfortunately the patient isn’t a universal recipient, so we may not get the right grouping first go-off. I’d like one or two others handy in case. Good thing I brought everything with me. Always do in an accident case. Never know what you may need, and time’s everything.’

  He darted out, leaving behind him an atmosphere of mystery and haste. The policeman shook his head and pocketed his note-book.

  ‘Dunno as blood-offerings is part of my dooty,’ he observed. ‘I did oughter get back to me beat. But I’ll ’ave to give that there car the once-over and see what my chum ’as to say about it. I’ll look in again when I done that, and if they wants me they’ll know where to find me. Now, then, what do you want?’

  ‘Press,’ said a man at the door, succinctly. ‘Somebody phoned to say Mr. Drury was badly hurt. That true? Very sorry to hear it. Ah! Good evening, Mr. Scales. This is all very distressing. I wonder, can you tell me …?’

  Scales found himself helplessly caught up in the wheels of the Press—giving an account of the accident—saying all the right things about Drury—what Drury had done for him—what Drury had done for the play—quoting Drury’s words—expatiating on Drury’s courage, presence of mind and thought for others—manufacturing a halo round Drury—mentioning the strange (and to the newspaper man, gratifying) coincidence that the arm actually wounded was the arm wounded in the play—hoping that Roger Brand, the understudy, would be able to carry on till Mr. Drury was sufficiently recovered to play again—feeling his hatred for Drury rise up in him like a flood with every word he uttered—and finally insisting, with a passion and emphasis that he could not explain to himself, on his own immense personal gratitude and friendship towards Drury and his desperate anxiety to see him restored to health. He felt as though, by saying this over and over again he might stifle something—something—some frightful thing within him that was asserting itself against his will. The reporter said that Mr. Scales had his deepest sympathy. …

  ‘Mr.—ha, hum——’ said the doctor, popping his head in again.

  ‘Excuse me,’ said Scales, quickly. He made for the door; but Walter was there before him, agitatedly offering his life-blood by the gallon. Scales thought he could see the pressman’s ears prick up like a dog’s. A blood-transfusion, of course, was always jam for a headline. But the doctor made short work of the reporter.

  ‘No time for you,’ he said, brusquely, pulling Scales and Walter out and slamming the door. ‘Yes—I want another test. Hope one of you’s the right sort. If not,’ he added, with a sort of grim satisfaction, ‘we’ll try bleeding the tripe-hound. Learn him not to make a fuss.’ He led the way back into Drury’s dressing-room where the big screen which usually shrouded the washstand had been pulled round to conceal the couch. A space had been cleared on the table, and a number of articles laid out upon it; bottles, pipettes, needles, a porcelain slab oddly marked and stained, and a small drum of the sort used for protecting sterilised instruments. Standing near the wash-basin, one of the ambulance men was boiling a saucepan on a gas-ring.

  ‘Now then,’ said the doctor. He spoke in a low tone, perfectly clear, but calculated not to carry beyond the screen. ‘Don’t make more noise than you can help. I’ll have to do it here—no gas-ring in the other room, and I don’t want to leave the patient. Never mind—it won’t take a minute to make the tests. I can do you both together. Here, you—I want this slab cleaned—no, never mind, here’s a clean plate; that’ll do—it needn’t be surgically sterile.’ He wiped the plate carefully with a towel and set it on the table between the two men. Scales recognised the pattern of pink roses; it had often held sandwiches while he and Drury, endlessly talking, had hammered out new dialogue for Bitter Laurel over a quick lunch. ‘You understand’—the doctor looked from one to the other and addressed himself to Walter, as though feeling that the unfortunate man might burst unless some notice was taken of him soon—’that your blood—everybody’s blood—belongs to one or other of four different groups.’ He opened the drum and picked out a needle. ‘There’s no necessity to go into details; the point is that, for a transfusion to be successful, the donor’s blood must combine in a particular way with the patient’s. Now, this will only be a prick—you’ll scarcely feel it.’ He took Walter by the ear and jabbed the needle into the lobe. ‘If the donor’s blood belongs to an unsuitable group, it causes agglutination of the red cells, and the operation is worse than useless.’ He drew off a few drops of blood into a pipette. Walter watched and listened, seeming to understand very little, but soothed by the calm, professional voice. The doctor transferred two separate droplets of diluted blood to the plate, making a little ring about each with a grease pencil. ‘There is one type of person’—here he captured Scales and repeated the operation upon his ear with a fresh needle and pipette—’Group 4, we call them, who are universal donors; their blood suits anybody. Or, of course, if one of you belongs to the patient’s own blood-group, that would do nicely. Unfortunately, he’s a Group 3, and that’s rather rare. So far, we’ve been unlucky.’ He placed two drops of Scales’s blood on the other side of the plate, drawing a pencil-mark from edge to edge to separate the two pairs of specimens, set the plate neatly between the two donors, so that each stood guard over his own property, and turned again to Walter:

  ‘Let’s see, what’s your name?’

  As though in answer, there was a movement behind the screen. Something fell with a crash, and the ambulance man put out a scared face saying urgently:

  ‘Doctor!’ At the same moment came Drury’s voice: ‘Walter—tell Walter——!’ trailing into silence. Walter and the doctor dived for the screen together, Scales catching Walter as he pushed past him. The second ambulance man put down what he was doing and ran to assist. There was a moment of bustle and expostulation, and the doctor said: ‘Come, now, give him a chance.’ Walter came back to his place at the table. His mouth looked as though he were going to cry.

  ‘They won’t let me see him. He asked for me.’

  ‘He mustn’t exert himself,’ you know, said Scales, mechanically.

  The patient was muttering to himself and the doctor seemed to be trying to quiet him. Scales and Walter Hopkins stood waiting helplessly, with the plate between them. Four little drops of blood—absurd, thought Scales, that they should be of so much importance, when you remembered that horrible welter in the street, on the couch. On the table stood a small wooden rack, containing ampoules. He read the labels: ‘Stock Serum No. II.’ ‘Stock Serum No. III’; the words conveyed nothing to him; he noticed, stupidly, that one of the little pink roses on the border of the plate had been smudged in the firing—that Walter’s hands were trembling as he supported himself upon the table.

  Then the doctor reappeared, whispering to the ambulance men: ‘Do try to keep him quiet.’ Walter looked anxiously at him. ‘All right, so fa
r,’ said the doctor. ‘Now then, where were we? What did you say your name was?’ He labelled the specimens on Walter’s side of the plate with the initials ‘W.H.’

  ‘Mine’s John Scales,’ said Scales. The doctor wrote down the initials of London’s popular playwright as indifferently as though they had been those of a rate-collector and took from the rack the ampoule of Serum II. Breaking it, he added a little of the contents, first to a drop of the ‘J.S.’ blood and, next, to a drop of ‘W.H.’ blood, scribbling the figure II. beside each specimen. To each of the remaining drops he added, in the same way, a little of Serum III. Blood and serum met and mingled; to Scales, all four of the little red blotches looked exactly alike. He was disappointed; he had vaguely expected something more dramatic.

  ‘It’ll take a minute or two,’ said the doctor, gently rocking the plate. ‘If the blood of either of you mixes with both sera without clumping the red corpuscules, then that donor is a universal donor, and will do. Or, if it clumps with Serum II and remains clear with Serum III, then the donor belongs to the patient’s own blood group and will do excellently for him. But if it clumps with both sera or with Serum III only, then it will do for the patient in quite another sense.’ He set the plate down and began to fish in his pocket.

  One of the ambulance men looked round the screen again. ‘I can’t find his pulse,’ he announced helplessly, ‘and he’s looking very queer.’ The doctor clicked his tongue in a worried way against his teeth and vanished. There were movements, and a clinking of glass.

  Scales gazed down at the plate. Was there any difference to be seen? Was one of the little blotches on Walter’s side beginning to curdle and separate into grains as though some one had sprinkled it with cayenne pepper? He was not sure. On his own side of the plate, the drops looked exactly alike. Again he read the labels; again he noted the pink rose that had been smudged in the firing—the pink rose—funny about the pink rose—but what was funny about it? Certainly, one of Walter’s drops was beginning to look different. A hard ring was forming about its edge, and the tiny, peppery grains were growing darker and more distinct.

  ‘He’ll do now,’ said the doctor, returning, ‘but we don’t want to lose any time. Let’s hope——’

  He bent over the plate again. It was the drop labelled III that had the queer, grainy look—was that the right way or the wrong way round? Scales could not remember. The doctor was examining the specimens closely, with the help of a pencil microscope. … Then he straightened his back with a small sigh of relief.

  ‘Group 4,’ he announced; ‘we’re all right now.’

  ‘Which of us?’ thought Scales (though he was pretty sure of the answer). He was still obscurely puzzled by the pink rose.

  ‘Yes,’ went on the doctor, ‘no sign of agglutination. I think we can risk that without a direct matchup against the patient’s blood. It would take twenty minutes and we can’t spare the time.’ He turned to Scales. ‘You’re the man we want.’

  Walter gave an anguished cry.

  ‘Not me?’

  ‘Hush!’ said the doctor authoritatively. ‘No, I’m afraid we can’t let it be you. Now, you’—he turned to Scales again—’are a universal donor; very useful person to have about. Heart quite healthy, I suppose? Feels all right. You look fit enough, and thank goodness, you’re not fat. Get your coat off, will you, and turn up your sleeve. Ah, yes. Nice stout-looking vein. Splendid. Now, you won’t take any harm—you may feel a little faint perhaps, but you’ll be right as rain in an hour or so.’

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Scales. He was still looking at the plate. The smudged rose was on his right. Surely it had always been on his right. Or had it started on his left? When? Before the blood-drops had been put on? Or after? How could it have altered its position? When the doctor was handling the plate? Or could Walter have caught the plate with his sleeve and swivelled it round when he made his mad rush for the screen? If so, was that before the specimens had been labelled? After, surely. No, before—after they were taken and before they were labelled. And that would mean …

  The doctor was opening the drum again; taking out bandages, forceps, a glass flask. …

  That would mean that his own blood and Walter’s had changed places before the serum was added, and if so …

  … scissors, towels, a kind of syringe. …

  If there was the smallest doubt, one ought to draw attention to it and have the specimens tested again. But perhaps either of their bloods would have done equally well; in that case, the doctor would naturally give the preference to John Scales, rather than to poor Walter, shivering there like a leaf. Clump with II, clear with III; clump with III, clear with II—he couldn’t remember which way it went. …

  ‘No, I’m sorry,’ repeated the doctor. He escorted Walter firmly to the door and came back. ‘Poor chap—he can’t make out why his blood won’t do. Hopeless, of course. Just as well give the man prussic acid at once.’

  … The pink rose. …

  ‘Doctor——’ began Scales.

  And then, suddenly, Drury’s voice came from behind the screen, speaking the line that had been written to be spoken with a harsh and ugly cynicism, but giving it as he had given it now on the stage for nearly a hundred performances:

  ‘All right, all right, don’t worry—I’ll rest on my laurels.’

  The hated, heart-breaking voice—the professional actor’s voice—sweet as sugar plums—liquid and mellow like an intoxicated flute.

  Damn him! thought Scales, feeling the rubber band tighten above his elbow, I hope he dies. Never to hear that damned awful voice again. I’d give anything. I’d give …

  He watched his arm swell and mottle red and blue under the pressure of the band. The doctor gave him an injection of something. Scales said nothing. He was thinking:

  Give anything. I would give my life. I would give my blood. I have only to give my blood—and say nothing. The plate was turned round. … No, I don’t know that. It’s the doctor’s business to make sure. … I can’t speak now. … He’ll wonder why I didn’t speak before. … Author sacrifices blood to save benefactor. … Roses to right of him, roses to left of him … roses, roses all the way. … I will rest on my laurels.

  The needle now—plump into the vein. His own blood flowing, rising in the glass flask … somebody bringing a bowl of warm water with a faint steam rising off it. …

  … His life for his friend … right as rain in an hour or two … blood-brothers … the blood is the life … as well give him prussic acid at once … to poison a man with one’s own blood … new idea for a murder … MURDER.

  ‘Don’t jerk about,’ said the doctor.

  … and what a motive! … Murder to save one’s artistic soul … who’d believe that? … and losing money by it … your money or your life … his life for his friend … his friend for his life … life or death, and not to know which one was giving … not really know … not know at all, really … too late now … absurd to say anything now … nobody saw the plate turned round … and who would ever imagine …?

  ‘That’ll do,’ said the doctor. He loosened the rubber band, dabbed a pad of wool over the puncture and pulled out the needle, all, it seemed to Scales, in one movement. He plopped the flask into a little stand over the bowl of water and dressed the arm with iodine. ‘How do you feel? A trifle faint? Go and lie down in the other room for a minute or two.’

  Scales opened his mouth to speak, and was suddenly assailed by a queer, sick qualm. He plunged for the door. As he went, he saw the doctor carry the flask behind the screen.

  Damn that reporter! He was still hanging round. Meat and drink to the papers, this kind of thing. Heroic sacrifice by grateful author. Good story. Better story still if the heroic author were to catch him by the arm, pour into his ear the unbelievable truth—were to say: ‘I hated him, I hated him, I tell you—I’ve poisoned him—my blood’s poison—serpent’s blood, dragon’s blood——’

  And what would the doctor say? If this really had gone wrong, woul
d he suspect? What could he suspect? He hadn’t seen the plate move. Nobody had. He might suspect himself of negligence, but he wouldn’t be likely to shout that from the housetops. And he had been negligent—pompous, fat, chattering fool. Why didn’t he mark the specimens earlier? Why didn’t he match-up the blood with Drury’s? Why did he need to chatter so much and explain things? Tell people how easy it was to murder a benefactor?

  Scales wished he knew what was happening. Walter was hovering outside in the passage. Walter was jealous—he had looked on enviously, grudgingly, as Scales came stumbling in from the operation. If only Walter knew what Scales had been doing, he might well look. … It occurred to Scales that he had played a shabby trick on Walter—cheated him—Walter, who had wanted so much to sacrifice his right, his true, his life-giving blood. …

  Twenty minutes … nearly half an hour. … How soon would they know whether it was all right or all wrong? ‘As well give him prussic acid,’ the doctor had said. That suggested something pretty drastic. Prussic acid was quick—you died as if struck.

  Scales got up, pushed Walter and the pressman aside and crossed the passage. In Drury’s room the screen had been pushed back. Scales, peeping through the door, could see Drury’s face, white and glistening with sweat. The doctor bent over the patient, holding his wrist. He looked distressed—almost alarmed. Suddenly he turned, caught sight of Scales and came over to him. He seemed to take minutes to cross the room.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said the doctor. ‘I’m very much afraid—you did your best—we all did our best.’

  ‘No good?’ Scales whispered back. His tongue and palate were like sawdust.

  ‘One never can be certain with these things,’ said the doctor. ‘I’m very much afraid he’s going.’ He paused and his eyes were faintly puzzled. ‘So much hæmorrhage,’ he muttered as though explaining the trouble to himself. ‘Shock—cardiac strain—excitable’—and, in a worried voice—’he complained almost at once of pain in the back.’ He added, with more assurance: ‘It’s always a bit of a gamble, you see, when the operation is left so late—and sometimes there is a particular idiosyncrasy. I should have preferred a direct test; but it’s not satisfactory if the patient dies while you wait to make sure.’