On the bed, between the two men, lay a third--an old-looking youth with lank red hair. It was the story of St. Jacob Straat over again, and it was new to Percy Roden, who could not turn his eyes elsewhere. The man was dying. He was a Pole who understood no word of English. Indeed, these three men had no language in common in which to make themselves understood.
“Can you do nothing at all?” asked Roden, for the second or third time.
“Nothing,” answered Von Holzen, without turning round. “He was a doomed man when he came here.”
The man lay on the bed and stared at Von Holzen's back. Perhaps that was the reason why Von Holzen so persistently looked out of the window. The work-hours were over, and from some neighbouring cottage the sounds of a concertina came on the quiet air. The musician had chosen a popular music-hall song, which he played over and over again with a maddening pertinacity. Roden bit his lip, and frowned at each repetition of the opening bars. Von Holzen, with a still, pale face and stern eyes, seemed to hear nothing. He had no nerves. At times he twisted his lips, moistening them with his tongue, and suppressed an impatient sigh. The man was a long time in dying. They had been waiting there two hours. This little incident had to be passed over as quietly as possible on account of the feelings of the concertina player and the others.
The door stood ajar, and in the adjoining room a professional nurse, in cap and apron, sat reading a German newspaper. This also was a bedroom. The cottage was, in point of fact, the hospital of the malgamite workers. The nurse, whose services had not hitherto been wanted, had since the inauguration of the works spent some pleasant weeks at a pension at Scheveningen. She read her newspaper very philosophically, and waited.
Roden it was who watched the patient. The dying man never heeded him, but looked persistently towards Von Holzen. The expression of his eyes indicated that if they had had a language in common he would have spoken to him. Roden saw the direction of the man's glance, and perhaps read its meaning. For Percy Roden was handicapped with that greatest of all drags on a successful career--a soft heart. He could speak harshly enough of the malgamiters as a class, but he was drawn towards this dumb individual, with a strong desire to effect the impossible. Von Holzen had not promised that there should be no deaths. He had merely undertaken to reduce the dangers of the malgamite industry gradually and steadily until they ceased to exist. He had, moreover, the strength of mind to give to this incident its proper weight in the balance of succeeding events. He was not, in a word, handicapped as was his colleague.