The Anatomy of Deception - Lawrence Goldstone [74]
“What did you say?” I wondered how the Benedicts had communicated details of a visit that had taken place just the night before.
The Professor smiled. “I told him that you would make a superb addition to his family.”
I was confused. “But I thought … you just said—”
“Just because I hope you will make a decision on your own does not mean that I will make it for you.”
With that, we returned to our reading. I was careful to open my book in the center, keeping the inside front cover concealed. While the Professor seemed to become instantly immersed in his Servetus, I was unable to concentrate at all on Plato.
Destiny, I realized, is a combination of desire and timing, or luck as the Professor put it. A man can put any degree of effort into shaping his fortune—as I had—yet it will all be for naught if the opportunity to manifest that effort does not avail itself. I had purged my speech of the twang that marked me as a western rustic; worked tirelessly to become knowledgeable and proficient in my field; read philosophy, history, and literature in addition to anatomy and biology, so as not to be judged as narrow; learned to dress and carry myself like a gentleman; and, most of all, sought out the most exalted stage on which my profession was being played. The result had been an appointment to a high position at a prestigious institution, when I might have droned out my days only one step up the ladder from Jorgie, a respected but nondescript physician at a well-regarded but hardly noteworthy hospital.
But luck only reveals itself in retrospect. George Turk, Rebecca Lachtmann, and, most of all, Abigail Benedict had now entered the mix, and whether my encounter with her would seal my good fortune, as I hoped, or my doom, as the Professor feared, could only at this point be guessed at.
My musings were interrupted as the train slowed at the outskirts of Baltimore. The Professor glanced up, closed his book, replaced it in his valise, and stretched.
“Well,” he said, “it begins.”
When we alit from the train ten minutes later, two men waited to greet us on the platform. One, whom I took to be Daniel Coit Gilman, was about sixty, white-haired but for dark eyebrows, with muttonchops that met at a full mustache over a shaved chin. He wore a frock coat, and was tall with a slightly shambling look. The other man was about the same age as the Professor, bald and of medium height with a carefully trimmed mustache and Vandyke. He stood extremely straight, almost military, but broke into a smile when he saw the Professor.
“Willie,” he exulted, grabbing the Professor’s hand and clapping him on the shoulder. “It’s glorious to see you.” I had never heard anyone except poor Annie call the Professor “Willie” before.
“Good to see you too, Willie,” the Professor rejoined, pumping the other Willie’s hand so hard that it seemed as if he were trying to draw water. The Professor gestured toward me. “And this is the man I told you about.” He positioned himself between us. “Ephraim Carroll … William Welch.”
So this was Welch, who was to head the entire faculty and be the Professor’s superior. The Johns Hopkins staff, then, would not only be brilliant: It would have the energy of youth.
The older man, Gilman, had waited patiently—and happily—while the two Willies greeted each other, which I considered a remarkable show of diffidence and self-assurance. A man like Hiram Benedict would surely have taken umbrage at not being the first introduced. Now, however, Gilman stepped forward and extended his hand, not just to the Professor, but to me as well.
“Doctors,” he said, “it is an honor to have you at Johns Hopkins.”
The ride to the hospital was brief but memorable. As we crossed the downtown and emerged on the east side of the city, a remarkable sight came into view. On the top of a rise was a massive redbrick structure, topped by an enormous cupola and two towers. It seemed to stretch to the horizon. To the east of the main structure were a plethora of other buildings, constructed of the same material, all of which were clearly part