CHAPTER I


The young surgeon examined the man as he lay on the hospital chair in which
ward attendants had left him. The surgeon's fingers touched him deftly,
here and there, as if to test the endurance of the flesh he had to deal
with. The head nurse followed his swift movements, wearily moving an
incandescent light hither and thither, observing the surgeon with languid
interest. Another nurse, much younger, without the "black band," watched
the surgeon from the foot of the cot. Beads of perspiration chased
themselves down her pale face, caused less by sympathy than by sheer
weariness and heat. The small receiving room of St. Isidore's was close and
stuffy, surcharged with odors of iodoform and ether. The Chicago spring, so
long delayed, had blazed with a sudden fury the last week in March, and now
at ten o'clock not a capful of air strayed into the room, even through the
open windows that faced the lake.

The patient groaned when the surgeon's fingers first touched him, then
relapsed into the spluttering, labored respiration of a man in liquor or in
heavy pain. A stolid young man who carried the case of instruments freshly
steaming from their antiseptic bath made an observation which the surgeon
apparently did not hear. He was thinking, now, his thin face set in a
frown, the upper teeth biting hard over the under lip and drawing up the
pointed beard. While he thought, he watched the man extended on the chair,
watched him like an alert cat, to extract from him some hint as to what he
should do. This absorption seemed to ignore completely the other occupants
of the room, of whom he was the central, commanding figure. The head nurse
held the lamp carelessly, resting her hand over one hip thrown out, her