The Anatomy of Deception - Lawrence Goldstone [114]
“When I returned to Baltimore with the supply that Turk had then sold me, I discovered that it was not diacetylmorphine at all, but simple morphia. I confess to say that I panicked. The prospect of a return to morphia addiction was terrifying. I surreptitiously returned to Philadelphia to confront him. I had a difficult moment when I ran into Weir Mitchell on the street, but I told him that I had come to town to perform surgery.
“I found out where Turk lived … a tortuous process, as I am told you know as well … and surprised him at his home. He told me that I could have the new drug anytime I wanted—all I needed to do was to help him out. I refused.
“I went back to Baltimore, but became increasingly desperate. I returned to Philadelphia yet again and accosted Turk at that waterfront saloon he frequented.”
“The Fatted Calf?” I asked.
“Yes. That was the place.” Halsted removed his pince-nez and polished the lenses with a handkerchief that he removed from his vest pocket, slowly, his fingers moving at constant speed like a metronome. When he was done, he checked the result, then replaced it on the bridge of his nose. “By that time, Welch had begun to suspect that my situation had deteriorated and that it had something to do with my frequent trips to Philadelphia. He made Dr. Osler aware of the situation. Together they resolved to once more render me assistance beyond that which anyone has a right to expect.
“I was beside myself by the time I arrived at the bar. I had come to see Turk as the embodiment of evil, a fiend withholding a lifesaving drug from a desperately ill unfortunate. I burst in and accosted him. Turk responded by threatening to expose me to the world. ‘The great Halsted on drugs again,’ was I think how he put it. At just that moment, Dr. Osler arrived. Unbeknownst to me, Welch had been observing me and cabled Dr. Osler that I was on the train. Dr. Osler followed me from the station to the bar, and then took me back to the station and returned me to Baltimore.”
“Even then,” the Professor said, “I never knew that it was Turk whom Halsted had come to see. I waited at the door whilst someone else went across the room to fetch him. When we left, Halsted merely said that the man was a monster. He did not identify him by name.”
“Thus, when you saw me arguing with Turk at The Fatted Calf,” Halsted went on, “it was natural to assume that I knew him as a physician or even a fellow conspirator, instead of merely as a drug supplier. In that, Dr. Carroll, you were mistaken.”
“How did you know that I saw you at The Fatted Calf?” I asked, astonished.
“I knew you had been with Turk that evening,” said the Professor. “The extrapolation was not unreasonable.”
At that point, Halsted placed his hands in his lap. He had finished. For some moments, no one spoke as I tried to digest all of what he had said. He had accounted for every incident, every open question. Each conclusion that I had drawn could be accounted for by this alternate construction of the facts. Halsted’s version amounted to a set of coincidences, certainly, but no more so than mine.
But the more powerful impression was of Halsted, the man. The Professor had been correct. Greatness fairly flew off him. I thought of the passion with which Dr. Osler had spoke of the noble, doomed Servetus and understood why he would go to such enormous lengths to protect the man before me. For the Professor, Halsted, like Servetus, had every element of the protagonist of a Greek tragedy: accomplished, courageous, indomitable, but ultimately struck down by circumstance and coincidence. For Servetus, there had been no pulling back from tragedy, while here, Welch and the Professor—and quite possibly I—might succeed in carving a very different end to the story.
“So, Ephraim,