"What did your father say about the heart?"
"In normal condition, considering the history, sir."
"Strange. Was that your understanding, Mattus?"
Silence lay over the air again. MacArthur put his head back into his hands and began checking it all over: Cub, Mattus, Bear, the student nurse, the orderly, the Head Nurse in Medicine Clinic ... the ... was there anybody else? Was it possible....
He stopped his mind and decided not to think until he had some facts. There would be no sense in clouding his faculties with hysterical superstitions. A clear head was what must be maintained.
The morning light was beginning to fill the room; it began to suffuse the faces of the four men.
MacArthur straightened and turned to Cub Sterling and Mattus, and smiled.
"I'm sorry boys if I've been taciturn ... but the Elijah Wilson is my only child ... and as a parent I guess I'm hopeless."
Cub Sterling was upon his feet and towering over MacArthur. Mattus' manner dropped from him and he became almost a schoolboy in his shyness.
Bear Sterling stirred in his sleep and awoke. His steel-gray eyes were softened by the coming dawn. All three men turned to him. His eyes became pin points.
"Wish Heddis hadn't gone to that damn convention."
"I've telegraphed for him. Could that sleeping potion have been administered hypodermically?" MacArthur's voice was thin and old.
"Improbable. The order was for capsule," Cub Sterling snapped.
"Then that puncture was from...." Mattus' voice slid into the opening each man's brain had already made.
"Durn these pharmacologists!" Bear announced and closed his eyes.
MacArthur took his watch from his pocket and said:
"Boys, since all tests are being done upon those organs, it may be hours yet. Go get some sleep and prepare for today. You'll have a twenty-four hour job ahead of you to sit on the suppressed hysteria in Medicine Clinic ... and you have _got_ to sit on it!"
Mattus and Cub Sterling rose. Patients, another day, ... Tuesday! ... rounds, diagnoses ... they had forgotten it all! And within three hours it must be faced again.
They turned toward the door and it was opened in their faces by the second assistant chemist.
He was a small damp man whose limp black hair sweated into his muddy forehead. He said: