The Anatomy of Deception (34 page)

“But they responded to my cable denying any such work.”

“That is hardly surprising, Doctor,” said Halsted. “There are millions to be made in pharmaceuticals. We are dealing with easily synthesized substances here. The trick is to find one that works before your competitors. If diacetylmorphine
is seen to have medicinal properties, whoever acquires the patent will accrue all the profits. Bayer would never chance alerting any potential challenger to its researches.”

“Then how did Turk get it?”

“Drugs are like a leaky roof, Ephraim,” said the Professor. “Water always finds the hole. In this case, someone at Bayer must have been stealing a supply of the drug and either he or a confederate had the foresight to ship it to America, where demand is always high and German authorities would have no power.”

I turned my attention back to Halsted. “But isn’t diacetylmorphine addicting in its own right?”

“The evidence is not clear,” replied Halsted. “I am able to maintain equilibrium on a substantially more modest dose than of morphia, so it is quite possible that it can be used safely for clinical purposes. Addiction tends to be progressive, however, so there is no telling what the future holds.”

“We are dealing with that issue in Dr. Halsted’s case,” said the Professor, “as you will see.” I thought we would move on from there, but the Professor had not forgotten. “So, Ephraim, how did you come up with the Bayer Company?”

I had no choice at that point than to admit that I had not simply found a key and turned it over to the police, but had visited the den on Wharf Lane before the police. I told them of the discovery of the hidden compartment and finding the drugs and the weapons inside. I did not mention the journal. I wanted to decipher the entries before I divulged its existence to anyone.

They both listened, rapt. When I was done, the Professor sighed and shook his head. “Ephraim,” he said. “We have underestimated you. You’ve been cleverer than we supposed—and a good deal more reckless. You must have had the devil of a time of it, juggling the police, Miss Benedict, Jonas Lachtmann, and us.”

“It has been something of a strain,” I admitted, but I was
also feeling more than a little self-important at having impressed Halsted and the Professor with my sleuthing.

“Well, Ephraim, I think you can relax now. Perhaps we should allow Dr. Halsted to finish.”

Halsted nodded and took another sip of tea. He was methodical in his movements, almost practiced, as if he had taught himself to think through even the simplest action before actually performing it. “During one of my visits to Turk,” he went on, “he informed me that he knew that I was a surgeon of some repute. At the time, I could not imagine how he had come on such knowledge. I was making only occasional visits to Philadelphia and had in no way identified myself. Now, of course, it is clear from whence this bit of knowledge emanated.

“As a price for his silence—and an uninterrupted supply of the drug—Turk demanded that I perform certain services for him. When I asked what services he had in mind, he told me that, from time to time, young ladies in trouble came to him for assistance. His meaning was instantly clear. I told him he was insane if he expected me to perform abortions. He merely shrugged and said that there had been no harm in trying.

“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,” Dr. Osler said, “now that you have heard the truth, perhaps you will enlighten us as to your theory of the events? It seems apparent that you believe that Dr. Halsted bungled Rebecca Lachtmann’s abortion and, to cover it up, he poisoned Turk.”

“Yes,” I was forced to admit, “that is what I thought.”

“In your version, was I complicit in these crimes? Or simply aware of them and covering up?”

“The latter,” I confessed weakly.

“Very well,” the Professor said. “Not an unreasonable conclusion, as I said. But how did you account for a surgeon of Dr. Halsted’s talents perforating the bowel during a routine procedure, even granting that the environment was challenging?”

“I assumed that the drug had rendered his hand unsteady.”

“I’m afraid that won’t do at all, Dr. Carroll,” said Halsted. “I’ve performed hundreds, if not thousands, of operations under the influence of drugs and have never … not once … botched any of them.”

“That is what I wanted to tell you, once again trusting in your confidence,” interjected the Professor. “Dr. Halsted is too valuable to society—too many lives are at stake—for us to take a risk on his incapacitation. Dr. Halsted’s efforts to shake free of drug addiction have been Herculean and, one day, might well have resulted in a freedom from dependence. For the time being, however, Welch and I have convinced Dr. Halsted that, rather than continue to compromise both his health and his abilities, he should instead maintain himself on morphia. He can do so at minimal levels, which will allow him to continue to work.”

“Is it possible to attain such an equilibrium?” I asked, skeptical.

“Most definitely,” avowed Halsted. “Once I had freed myself from a need to eliminate morphia entirely, I found that I could control the cravings with judicious administration. Would that I had done so before I encountered Turk.”

I had a final question. “Dr. Osler, why did you refuse to autopsy Rebecca Lachtmann if you had no idea who she was or how she died?”

The Professor’s expression grew serious, almost sad. “In that, Ephraim, Turk was correct. While in Montréal, I fell in love with a young woman named Elise Légér. She was a remarkable beauty, but her father was a clergyman who disapproved of my profession, or at least the manner in which I conducted it. He refused to give his consent to my proposal of marriage. Elise and I were heartbroken. We even discussed elopement. In the end, however, she simply could not disobey her father and we never saw each other again. But she is in my thoughts often.”

The Professor’s eyes drifted away, into his youth. “When I swung open the cover of the ice chest, the resemblance was remarkable. It was as if I were staring at Elise. I knew after a few seconds that it could not have been, of course. I had not seen her in over fifteen years, and she would by now be thirty-five, far older than the woman we saw. But it was quite a shock all the same. It is not every day that one sees a ghost of one’s past, eh?

“It seems,” he went on, “that this was another occasion where you took a set of symptoms and extrapolated into a reasonable diagnosis that turned out to be incorrect. Turk reacted because he
knew
it was Rebecca Lachtmann, and it must have given him quite a fright to believe that I was reacting for the same reason. So, knowing that I often confided in you, he asked you to join him for the evening, gave you too much to drink, and then, I am sure, tried to persuade you to divulge anything that I might have said that would have put him at risk.”

“Yes, he did try to get me to talk about you,” I admitted. “This all seems plausible, certainly, but then who poisoned him?”

“We may never know. I am sure Turk had any number of enemies.”

“Despite what you seem to think, Doctor,” interjected Halsted, “it does not take a scientist or a physician to administer arsenic in an appropriate quantity to replicate cholera. Poisoning has been a time-honored means of murder for centuries, and there are countless cases in which poison was confused for some other malady. In its storied history, arsenic was often referred to as ‘inheritance powder’ because of the facility with which an heir might dispatch an unwanted legator.”

“You are a fine scientific practitioner, Ephraim,” the Professor told me. “Your method, tenacity, and use of logic, as this episode has demonstrated, are all first-rate. But there is more to science than logic. You need instinct and, yes, even
heart. You will develop these qualities, I am sure, but you should always bear in mind how, in these events, pure method not only led you astray, but came perilously closer to causing the ruination of an innocent man.”

There was nothing to do at that point but agree and ask Dr. Halsted’s forgiveness. He was quite magnanimous in granting it. Dr. Osler then asked if I could still feel comfortable in having him and Dr. Halsted as colleagues. Of course I was comfortable—I was a man reprieved. A little less than twenty-four hours earlier, I had sat in Jonas Lachtmann’s study with my freedom and even my life left to the financier’s whim, and now I would leave for Johns Hopkins in three days to take up a position of responsibility and respect.

As promised, Mrs. Barlow had prepared dinner. For the next ninety minutes, I sat and discussed the future of medicine, with two of the greatest men in the field. They treated me thoroughly as an equal. It was perhaps the happiest hour and a half of my life.

As soon as I was out of Dr. Osler’s door, however, I was reminded that I had not quite fully emerged from the shadow of Rebecca Lachtmann’s death. Waiting outside, a reminder of my promise to deliver up a murderer to Jonas Lachtmann, was Keuhn.

T
HREE DAYS. I TRIED TO
convince myself that once I left for Baltimore, the threat from Lachtmann would recede, that the man’s power somehow ended at the city limits. But distance would only prolong my separation from Abigail. I must see her, help her to defy her father, and come with me to start a new life in a new city. What impact her brother’s despicable behavior would have, if she or her father even knew of it, was not clear, but I was certain that she and I could surmount any obstacle. I wanted to rush once more to the Benedict home, but the appearance of desperation was not the answer. I must seem calm and in control of events if I was to expect her to place her trust in me.

Upon my arrival at the hospital the next morning, Keuhn once again an obvious presence at a respectful distance, I went straight for the administrative offices and, after complimenting her on her dress, I asked Miss Prendergast to please allow me to use the telephone. She cocked her head disapprovingly and noted that the telephone, one of only three in the entire hospital, was restricted to official use and emergencies.

“But this is an emergency, Miss Prendergast.” I sighed. “A sort of emergency, anyway.”

Miss Prendergast pursed her lips and looked out at me over the tops of her glasses. “An emergency of the heart?” she asked with a knowing smile. Miss Prendergast was a rail-thin spinster of forty with muddy brown hair who, it was rumored,
had rejected the one man who had proposed marriage on the grounds that a better proposal was in the offing, but no other proposal ever came. Now, her only opportunity for passion was in observing the passion of strangers.