Green for Danger (23 page)

“Come to see the execution?” mumbled William. His mouth was dry from the pre-operative atropine.

“That's right,” said Cockie. On second thoughts, however, this did not seem the most appropriate reply and he added with a rather ghastly cheerfulness: “That's a fine pair of socks you've got!”

William wriggled his feet in their vast white woollen stockings. He was dressed in a grey flannel nightgown and covered with blankets and looked indescribably helpless and pathetic.

Esther came into the room, thrusting her arms into the sleeves of a green surgical gown as she walked, and looking very white and strained. Barnes followed her, also gowned, his mask hanging by its tapes round his neck. He said, smiling: “Hallo, Inspector.”

“Major Moon arranged for me to come in and—watch,” said Cockie, glancing apologetically at William.

“Yes, he told me; come along and we'll get you fixed up with a gown.”

In the washroom was Woods, assisting Major Moon and Theatre Sister to scrub up. Cockrill scoured his nicotined fingers and submitted to having a sort of green nightgown tied on him and a mask over his mouth and nose. Stumbling slightly over the gown, which was much too long for him, he meandered back to the operating theatre, his bright little eyes peeping over the mask, very bright and alert. Esther came in from the anæsthetic-room; she said, in a low voice: “Thank you for letting the sergeant come up from the ward with him and wait there.…”

“William will never be out of his sight or mine,” promised Cockrill.

“I can't say ‘thank you' enough; I'm being foolish, I know; it's good of you to humour me.”

“That's all right; nothing to thank me for,” said Cockie brusquely.

“I'm getting them to put out everything fresh,” she said, moving restlessly about the big, green, shining room. “Then nothing
can
go wrong.” As Woods came in carrying a cylinder of gas, she said irritably: “Do hurry up, Woody. They'll be starting soon and you simply must have everything ready.”

“All right, all right,” said Woody equably, balancing on one foot to close the door behind her with the other. “I'm coping.”

Cockrill relieved her of her burden and held it while she unclipped one half-used cylinder from the anæsthetic trolley and put the new one in and connected up the tubes. He watched her carefully, checking over in his mind the points of Barney's lesson a few days before. Esther said, fidgeting: “Have you opened a new drum, Woody?”

“Yes, Esther, darling, I'm seeing to all that. I promised I would and I will.”

“And fresh bundles of swabs.”

“Yes, of course, darling; we would in any case.”

“And a new bottle of iodine, Woody; open a new bottle. Have you done Barney's trolley?”

“I'm coming to that, Esther,” said Woods, her patience fraying a little. “I can't do everything at once.”

“What is it you want, Esther?” asked Barnes, coming into the theatre.

“Oh, Barney, I do want to have everything
fresh
on your trolley. I want everything brand new so that it can't possibly have been tampered with. I asked Theatre Sister and she said it would be all right. It doesn't involve very much and the other stuff can be used up afterwards. Of course the instruments come straight out of the steriliser—they must be all right, don't you think so, Barney? Don't you think they must be all right?”

“Yes, of course, Esther.”

“And the needles and gut and knives and things are in antiseptic.… It's just the bottles, Barney, and your stuff. You don't mind,
do
you?”

“No, I don't mind in the least, my dear, if it makes you any happier.”

“Well, it does. I know I'm foolish,” said Esther miserably; “but it makes me feel better to know that there
can't
be any mistakes.”

“I quite understand, Esther. It's perfectly all right with me.”

She stood irresolutely beside his trolley, fingering the various bottles and jars. “You won't be using any of these, will you?”

“Not unless anything goes … not for the regular anæsthetic,” corrected Barney hastily.

“And no ether or chloroform or anything?”

“No, no, just the ordinary gas and oxygen.”

Woods came staggering across the theatre with a second cylinder and Barnes helped her to fit it into its holder. “I'm sorry to give you all this extra trouble, Woody,” said Esther humbly.

Cockrill watched the tubes fitted up to his own satisfaction. He said suddenly, darting a finger at the three glass jars suspended over the trolley: “These bottles—the gas and oxygen mix in the first one, above the surface of the water, and pass along a single tube to the patient …?”

“That's right,” said Barnes.

“Could anything go wrong there? Are we sure this is water in the bottom of the jars?”

“I don't see what else it could be; but we can jolly soon make sure,” said Barney, without excitement. He took down the jars and sniffed at them each in turn. “They seem all right; but still, just in case, you could empty them out, Woody, and put fresh water in.”

Cockrill satisfied himself that the jars were replaced with nothing more perilous in them than a little sterile water, and returned to the trolley. He ran over the various points in his mind, trying to eliminate anything irrelevant. “Nothing involved except this one cylinder, black, of nitrous oxide; and this one, black and white, of oxygen. The green cylinder of carbon dioxide in the middle is duly switched off, and so are the spares of gas and oxygen. Everything is connected up properly. The patient has nitrous oxide first and then oxygen as well, and you can judge from the first and third tubes in the clear glass jar over the trolley how much of each he's getting. The gas and oxygen mix in the jar and pass along the single tube to the mask over the patient's face.” Put like that, it seemed very simple and straight-forward; he could not see where there could be room for accident. After a moment, however, he said suddenly: “Will you be using this air-way tube?”

“I expect so,” said Barnes; “I usually do.”

“Didn't you tell me that you dabble the end in lubricant first!”

“Yes, to make it slip into the throat more easily.”

“You haven't given us a fresh pot of lubricant, Miss Woods,” said Cockie, raising an eyebrow.

Woods came over to the trolley. “No, so I haven't; but surely …”

“I said
e
verything, Woody,” said Esther fretfully.

Woods shrugged her shoulders and went to a cupboard just outside the theatre. “Let's have this pot,” suggested Cockrill following her, pointing with a crooked finger at a jar other than that which she was lifting down. “And while we're about it—let's have a different bottle of iodine, shall we, right from the back row.…”

Esther put an unsteady hand to the lintel of the door. “Inspector—what are you suggesting?”

“Nothing, nothing, nothing …” But he dropped his air of false jollity and said, glaring at them all from under his eyebrows: “We want no clever tricks; easy enough to force a doctored bottle on us, wouldn't it be? Like a conjurer forcing a card. What else have you put out new, Miss Woods?”

“Only the adrenalin,” said Woody, rather shaken. “And of course I've opened a fresh drum of dressings and things.”

Cockrill pointed to a bottle of adrenalin still in the cupboard. “Well, take this one instead. We needn't trouble about the dressings.”

Woody obeyed, but she said doubtfully: “I don't know what on earth you're suggesting, Inspector. After all, only Esther and I knew that we were going to have everything fresh.''

“I'm suggesting nothing,” said Cockie irritably. “For all you know you've been playing into the murderer's hands, arranging to have everything new.” His hand went to his side in search of papers and tobacco, but found no pocket in the green gown; the atmosphere of the theatre, the bright light and the heat, and the knowledge that, though he did not really think that there was serious danger, he was taking a risk with a man's life, made him jumpy and on edge. He wished that they would get on with it.

Major Moon, in khaki shirtsleeves, came in from the washroom. “Will you be starting soon, Barney? Eden's here. I'll begin changing now. Oh, hallo, Inspector; everything all right?”

“Well, it's all
right
,” said Cockie grudgingly, “except that I want a cigarette.”

“We won't be long now,” promised Major Moon, grinning briefly. “Carry on, Barnes. Esther, my dear, you're not going to stay?”

“No, I'll wait outside, Major Moon, if that's all right with you. Frederica's coming to hold my hand.” She smiled at him wanly.

He gave her his gentle smile, and disappeared. Esther went out to the anæsthetic-room; they could hear her speaking quietly to William, and after a minute Sergeant Bray, in his white coat, fastened back the doors, and she wheeled the trolley in; Bray glanced at the Inspector for instructions and, receiving a jerk of the head, assisted her in lifting the stretcher on to the table; she jerked out the crossbars and slid away the steel supports. Woods arranged blankets and cloths. Esther said shakily: “Well, William, I must go along.”

“Yes, darling,” said William, essaying a smile.

She seemed unconscious of them all, standing there under the big, mirror-lined white light, looking down at him; her eyes were lit by a sort of glory that transfigured the pure, rather colourless oval beauty of her face. She bent down and kissed him gently on the lips and walked away, not looking back; and suddenly terror welled up in Cockie's dry little heart. “Supposing I'm wrong,” he thought. “Supposing I've made a mistake. Supposing I've watched the wrong person, and all this time somebody else has been working secretly … and this boy dies. I ought not to have left the place unguarded for a minute last night; I should have stayed here and sent for a man, not gone to fetch one. As it was, there must have been ten minutes after we stood talking in the lobby outside, when anyone could have slipped in.…” On the other hand, Barnes and Moon had known for some hours, then, that William was to be operated on next day; and Eden too, probably. Any of them could have made their dreadful arrangements during the morning or afternoon, before he, Cockrill, had known. But what arrangements? He himself had superintended the pre-operative injection in the ward; he, himself, had chosen the jars and bottles of anything that might conceivably be used on the patient in the theatre. The apparatus for anæsthesia was correctly connected up; and he was satisfied that it would be physically impossible to introduce the wrong gas into any of the cylinders. William had been guarded and watched from the moment he left the ward. It was impossible for anything to go wrong; and yet.… he remembered Esther's face as she had kissed her love good-bye; and fear hammered at his heart, driving out reason and responsibility and efficiency, a nameless, uneasy terror of he knew not what. He stared about him at the impersonal, shining room, at the rows of steel instruments, gleaming sadistically, sharpened and hooked and curved to bite into the shrinking flesh; at the writhing red rubber coils of tubing, at the swabs and needles and bundles of sterile gut, at the delicate bubbles playing so innocently up and down the narrow silver tube in the clear glass jar, at all the bright, unfamiliar impediments of surgery; and felt very helpless and very much afraid. There was a little roughness on the palm of his hand; he picked at it nervously with a nicotined fingernail.

Barnes was sitting on his stool, the square of gauze pulled up now, over his mouth and nose, his left hand holding the mask a little away from William's face, the right, passing under the left arm, fiddling with taps and valves. His voice said steadily: “Just breathe normally. Just relax and breathe normally. That's right. No hurry. Just breathe in and out.…” Woods stood at the side of the trolley, looked down at the patient quietly. Theatre Sister hovered over her instrument trolley. Eden and Moon came into the theatre pulling on their thin brown gloves, dusted with boracic to a dull grey. William closed lack-lustre eyes and his head fell to one side of the pillow. The line of bubbles increased in the clear glass jar.

Nobody spoke: but outside the theatre they could hear the tap-tap-tap of Frederica's little heels on the stone floor as she joined Esther in the waiting-room. William breathed deeper; his face, at the edges of the rubber mask, was an ugly red. “Is that all right?” asked Cockrill of Barnes, standing behind his shoulder.

“What, his colour? Yes, he's quite normal. It's time for the oxygen.” He turned another tap; bubbles appeared at the surface of the water from the third tube in the jar, and crept slowly down. The colour increased and deepened. “Are you sure he's all right?” said Cockrill in an agony of apprehension, picking nervily at the dryness of his palm.

“Just needs more oxygen,” said Barnes steadily.

Moon and Eden stood absolutely silent, staring down at the table; Woods' face was lined and heavy; the sister turned back from her instruments to glance at the patient and away again. She was new in the theatre since Sister Bates had died, and the mounting tension of fear and unreason passed her completely by.

The bubbles crept steadily down the third tube, dying away to a pinpoint on the first, as Barnes cut down the gas and poured in more oxygen. A line of sweat appeared across his brow. His face grew suddenly grey. He said in a low voice, but very clearly and distinctly in the silent room: “
My Christ
!” It might have been an oath or it might have been a prayer.

“What's happening?” whispered Moon. “I—I don't like it, Barnes; I don't like his colour …”; and Eden said urgently, putting out a hand to steady the jerky legs: “He's starting jactitations.”

Cockrill could not bear to look. His mind, usually so keen and clear, was a dark confusion of terror and self-questioning and hideous anxiety. He had made an experiment, thinking it was all so safe; had taken a terrible gamble with a man's life; and suddenly everything was going wrong. He jerked out abruptly: “Stop giving the anæsthetic! Don't give him any more!”