"Then there are other causes?" I inquired of Leslie.
"Alcohol," he returned, briefly. "I don"t think that figures in this instance. At least I"ve seen no evidence."
"Perhaps some drug?" I hazarded at a venture.
Leslie shrugged.
"How about the food?" inquired Craig. "Have you made any attempt to examine it?"
"I have," replied the commissioner. "When I came up here first I thought of that. I took samples of all the food that I could find in the ice-box, the kitchen, and the butler"s pantry. I have the whole thing, labeled, and I have already started to test them out. I"ll show you what I have done when we go down to the department laboratory."
Kennedy had been examining the books in the bookcase and now pulled out a medical dictionary. It opened readily to the heading, "Polyneuritis--multiple neuritis."
I bent over and read with him. In the disease, it seemed, the nerve fibers themselves in the small nerves broke down and the affection was motor, sensory, vasomotor, or endemic. All the symptoms described seemed to fit what I had observed in Mrs. Wardlaw.
"Invariably," the article went on, "it is the result of some toxic substance circulating in the blood. There is a polyneuritis psychosis, known as Korsakoff"s syndrome, characterized by disturbances of the memory of recent events and false reminiscences, the patient being restless and disorientated."
I ran my finger down the page until I came to the causes. There were alcohol, lead, a.r.s.enic, bisulphide of carbon, diseases such as diabetes, diphtheria, typhoid, and finally, much to my excitement, was enumerated beriberi, with the added information, "or, as the j.a.panese call it, kakke."
I placed my finger on the pa.s.sage and was about to say something about my suspicions of Kato when we heard the sound of footsteps in the hall, and Craig snapped the book shut, returning it hastily to the bookcase.
It was Miss Langdale who had made her patient comfortable in bed and now returned to us.
"Who is this Kato?" inquired Craig, voicing what was in my own mind.
"What do you know about him?"
"Just a young j.a.panese from the Mission downtown," replied the nurse, directly. "I don"t suppose you know, but Mrs. Wardlaw used to be greatly interested in religious and social work among the j.a.panese and Chinese; would be yet, but," she added, significantly, "she is not strong enough. They employed him before I came here, about a year ago, I think."
Kennedy nodded, and was about to ask another question, when there was a slight noise out in the hall. Thinking it might be Kato himself, I sprang to the door.
Instead, I encountered a middle-aged man, who drew back in surprise at seeing me, a stranger.
"Oh, good morning, Doctor Aitken!" greeted Miss Langdale, in quite the casual manner of a nurse accustomed to the daily visit at about this hour.
As for Doctor Aitken, he glanced from Leslie, whom he knew, to Kennedy, whom he did not know, with a very surprised look on his face. In fact, I got the impression that after he had been admitted he had paused a moment in the hall to listen to the strange voices in the Wardlaw study.
Leslie nodded to him and introduced us, without quite knowing what to say or do, any more than Doctor Aitken.
"A most incomprehensible case," ventured Aitken to us. "I can"t, for the life of me, make it out." The doctor showed his perplexity plainly, whether it was feigned or not.
"I"m afraid she"s not quite so well as usual," put in Miss Langdale, speaking to him, but in a manner that indicated that first of all she wished any blame for her patient"s condition to attach to us and not to herself.
Doctor Aitken pursed up his lips, bowed excusingly to us, and turned down the hall, followed by the nurse. As they pa.s.sed on to Mrs.
Wardlaw"s room, I am sure they whispered about us. I was puzzled by Doctor Aitken. He seemed to be sincere, yet, under the circ.u.mstances, I felt that I must be suspicious of everybody and everything.
Alone again for a moment, Kennedy turned his attention to the furniture of the room, and finally paused before a writing-desk in the corner. He tried it. It was not locked and he opened it. Quickly he ran through a pile of papers carefully laid under a paper-weight at the back.
A suppressed exclamation from him called my attention to something that he had discovered. There lay two doc.u.ments, evidently recently drawn up. As we looked over the first, we saw that it was Doctor Wardlaw"s will, in which he had left everything to his wife, although he was not an especially wealthy man. The other was the will of Mrs. Wardlaw.
We devoured it hastily. In substance it was identical with the first, except that at the end she had added two clauses. In the first she had done just as her mother had directed. Twenty-five thousand dollars had been left to Doctor Aitken. I glanced at Kennedy, but he was reading on, taking the second clause. I read also. Fifty thousand dollars was given to endow the New York j.a.panese Mission.
Immediately the thought of Kato and what Miss Langdale had just told us flashed through my mind.
A second time we heard the nurse"s footsteps on the hardwood floor of the hall. Craig closed the desk softly.
"Doctor Aitken is ready to go," she announced. "Is there anything more you wish to ask?"
Kennedy spoke a moment with the doctor as he pa.s.sed out, but, aside from the information that Mrs. Wardlaw was, in his opinion, growing worse, the conversation added nothing to our meager store of information.
"I suppose you attended Mrs. Marbury?" ventured Kennedy of Miss Langdale, after the doctor had gone.
"Not all the time," she admitted. "Before I came there was another nurse, a Miss Hackstaff."
"What was the matter? Wasn"t she competent?"
Miss Langdale avoided the question, as though it were a breach of professional etiquette to cast reflections on another nurse, although whether that was the real reason for her reticence did not appear.
Craig seemed to make a mental note of the fact.
"Have you seen anything--er--suspicious about this Kato?" put in Leslie, while Kennedy frowned at the interruption.
Miss Langdale answered quickly, "Nothing."
"Doctor Aitken has never expressed any suspicion?" pursued Leslie.
"Oh no," she returned. "I think I would have known it if he had any.
No, I"ve never heard him even hint at anything." It was evident that she wished us to know that she was in the confidence of the doctor.
"I think we"d better be going," interrupted Kennedy, hastily, not apparently pleased to have Leslie break in in the investigation just at present.
Miss Langdale accompanied us to the door, but before we reached it it was opened from the outside by a man who had once been and yet was handsome, although one could see that he had a certain appearance of having neglected himself.
Leslie nodded and introduced us. It was Doctor Wardlaw.
As I studied his face I could see that, as Leslie had already told us, it plainly bore the stigma of nervousness.
"Has Doctor Aitken been here?" he inquired, quickly, of the nurse.
Then, scarcely waiting for her even to nod, he added: "What did he say?
Is Mrs. Wardlaw any better?"
Miss Langdale seemed to be endeavoring to make as optimistic a report as the truth permitted, but I fancied Wardlaw read between the lines.
As they talked it was evident that there was a sort of restraint between them. I wondered whether Wardlaw might not have some lurking suspicion against Aitken, or some one else. If he had, even in his nervousness he did not betray it.
"I can"t tell you how worried I am," he murmured, almost to himself.
"What can this thing be?"
He turned to us, and, although he had just been introduced, I am sure that our presence seemed to surprise him, for he went on talking to himself, "Oh yes--let me see--oh yes, friends of Doctor--er--Leslie."
I had been studying him and trying to recall what I had just read of beriberi and polyneuritis. There flashed over my mind the recollection of what had been called Korsakoff"s syndrome, in which one of the mental disturbances was the memory of recent events. Did not this, I asked myself, indicate plainly enough that Leslie might be right in his suspicions of beriberi? It was all the more apparent a moment later when, turning to Miss Langdale, Wardlaw seemed almost instantly to forget our presence again. At any rate, his anxiety was easy to see.
After a few minutes" chat during which Craig observed Wardlaw"s symptoms, too, we excused ourselves, and the Health Commissioner undertook to conduct us to his office to show us what he had done so far. As for me, I could not get Miss Langdale out of my mind, and especially the mysterious letter to Kennedy. What of it and what of its secret sender?