He filled the room with sanity. Dr. Paton went to his usual morning manicure, and Dr. Barton came in quietly, nodded, sat down and joined the listening group. Nobody noticed Flannel-feet Hoffbein's entrance.
Dr. Harrison stopped and turned politely to Dr. MacArthur; like obedient schoolboys the other four men turned to MacArthur also.
"Gentlemen, I know it is most unusual and inconvenient to be called to a staff meeting without notice and at this hour. Still I believe the occasion justifies the summons. The thing of which Ethridge told you yesterday afternoon, is this morning.... At three A.M. the patient in Bed 11, Ward B, Medicine Clinic was found ... dead. There was an unexplained puncture from a hypodermic syringe in the left arm."
"MacArthur," Dr. Harrison's voice had become an august bass, "are you s-u-r-e?"
MacArthur stood up and walked toward Dr. Harrison. In his extended hand was the typewritten sheet. He was even straighter than he had been in the autopsy room. For thirty-odd years his and Dr. Harrison's great passion had been the Elijah Wilson Hospital. Harrison rose. They met in a patch of morning sunshine, which threw the sheen from Dr. Harrison's head into a mirror over the mantel and back into Prissy Paton's eyes.
Prissy gave a hysterical gasp and prepared to scream. Dr. Barton, in the voice he used with children, remarked, "Easy, sister. Easy!"
Hoffbein breathed like a returning pearl diver and enunciated carefully, "Read it, Harrison."
As Dr. MacArthur returned to his chair and Dr. Harrison cleared his throat, the door into the corridor opened slightly and Princeton Peters' peach-blossom face vied with the morning sun. Cub Sterling saw it and winced. Before any other man had taken it in, Princeton tiptoed into the room and his lavender eyes had assumed their death-mask purple.
With a precision which carried the force of bass waves against a rock ledge, Harrison began engraving into his brain and into theirs, the report of the second assistant chemist. As he turned the page to Dr. Heddis' supplement, the men stirred nervously and Hoffbein's eyes took on a mountain-out-of-molehill scorn.
Dr. Heddis' addition stated: "The routine tests, afore referred to, are being checked by my first assistant, Dr. Maids, who returned with me; so far they reveal nothing other than the ingredients of a sleeping potion. These ingredients tally with those prescribed in the order filed upon the patient's chart. Toxicology, like other branches of the Profession, is partly guess work. Since the cadaver bears evidence of a hypodermic puncture, and indications are that the potion was not administered that way, my belief is that this patient died of a syringe of some obscure drug.