The Anatomy of Deception - Lawrence Goldstone [107]
“Schultz?” I asked. “Does either of you speak German?”
The woman did. I showed her the cable, which was quite brief, and asked if she could translate.
“Ja,” she said. “Maybe.” She looked over it a few moments. “It say they not doing any … uh …” She was hung up on one word. “Tries?”
“Experiments?” I asked.
“Ja,” the woman replied. “Must be … speriments. They not doing any speriments on anything like you say.”
“Thank you,” I said.
When I emerged and took the streetcar to the hospital, Keuhn jumped on at the last minute. He dallied in the lobby as I made my way to the changing room, and he was down the corridor when I emerged five minutes later. Any time I chose, I could go through the laboratory and use the service stairs, from which I might walk out the back of the hospital and leave West Philadelphia by way of the Blockley. Attempting to shake Keuhn off, however, would be tantamount to admitting to Lachtmann that I had something further to hide. For the moment, it seemed, I was stuck with the Pinkerton man as a companion.
As I walked down the corridor in his direction, he smiled and backed around the corner. I was wondering if he would be in sight when I got to the turn, so I was fully unprepared to run face-to-face into the Professor. When he saw that it was I, he frowned in a manner that would ordinarily be reserved for a student who had misdiagnosed an encephalitic tumor.
“I’ve been looking for you,” he said tersely. “I want you to call on me this evening at my lodgings. Seven o’clock.”
He could not have chosen a worse possible night. It was imperative that I see Abigail as soon as possible. “I’m sorry, Dr. Osler,” I said, “but I’ve got a very important engagement this evening.”
“Cancel it,” he snarled and stalked away. I was left standing in the corridor, my hands hanging at my sides, Keuhn at one end, the Professor marching off down the other. Lachtmann had not kept his word. The truth was out and I was done for.
The Professor’s rooms were on Twelfth Street, north of downtown, two floors of a fashionable town house in a better section of the city, but removed from Millionaire’s Row. Like every other aspect of the Professor’s fortunes, his living standards were soon to be vastly enhanced. I had learned during our weekend that Gilman had arranged for him to reside in a large, extremely well-appointed town house in Baltimore.
I arrived precisely on time. Widows were the servants of choice for bachelors and, like my arrangement with Mrs. Mooney, the Professor engaged Mrs. Barlow to cook his meals and tend to his domestic needs. She opened the door and smiled when she saw me. Mrs. Barlow was an open-faced woman with six grown children. She was almost shapeless, but utterly unflappable, as if there were not a single of life’s crises or calamities that she had not witnessed or was without a plan to manage. With total aplomb, she removed vials filled with tissue samples that the Professor had deposited absent-mindedly in his coat, or answered the front door for four A.M. emergencies as if she had been awake for hours. I had been a guest here often and Mrs. Barlow had taken to doting on me, attentions that I accepted with a combination of embarrassment and gratitude.
“Come on in, Doctor,” she said in a soft brogue. “The Professor is waiting in the drawing room. You know the way.” Mrs. Barlow was the only person I knew other than myself who referred to Dr. Osler as “the Professor.”
She turned for the kitchen, leaving me to make my own way. As I trudged toward the drawing room, I heard a soft hum of voices. Who had the Professor invited to share the occasion of my dismissal? Was it Gilman himself, or Billings, or even Welch, up from Baltimore to make things official? I turned into the room and saw that it was none of those men.
It was Halsted.