THE EXPLOITS OF ELAINE (& Its Sequel The Romance of Elaine). Arthur B. Reeve

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СКАЧАТЬ happy to meet you, Dr. Reinstrom,” I greeted the new arrival, as he entered our office.

      For several minutes we sat and chatted of things medical here and abroad.

      “What is it, Doctor,” I asked finally, “that interests you most in America?”

      “Oh,” he replied quickly with an expressive gesture, “it is the broadmindedness with which you adopt the best from all over the world, regardless of prejudice. For instance, I am very much interested in the new twilight sleep. Of course you have borrowed it largely from us, but it interests me to see whether you have modified it with practice. In fact I have come to the Hillside Sanitarium particularly to see it used. Perhaps we may learn something from you.”

      It was most gracious and both Dr. Thompson and myself were charmed by our visitor. I reached over and touched a call-button and our head nurse entered from a rear room.

      “Are there any operations going on now?” I asked.

      She looked mechanically at her watch. “Yes, there are two cases, now, I think,” she answered.

      “Would you like to follow our technique, Doctor?” I asked, turning to Dr. Reinstorm.

      “I should be delighted,” he acquiesced.

      A moment later we passed down the corridor of the Sanitarium, still chatting. At the door of a ward I spoke to the attendant who indicated that a patient was about to be anesthetized, and Reinstrom and I entered the room.

      There, in perfect quiet, which is an essential part of the treatment, were several women patients lying in bed in the ward. Before us two nurses and a doctor were in attendance on one.

      I spoke to the Doctor, Dr. Holmes, by the way, who bowed politely to the distinguished Dr. Reinstrom, then turned quickly to his work.

      “Miss Sears,” he asked of one of the nurses, “will you bring me that hypodermic needle? How are you getting on, Miss Stern?” to the other who was scrubbing the patient’s arm with antiseptic soap and water, thoroughly sterilizing the skin.

      “You will see, Dr. Reinstrom.” I interposed in a low tone, “that we follow in the main your Freiburg treatment. We use scopolamin and narkophin.”

      I held up the bottle, as I said it, a rather peculiar shaped bottle, too.

      “And the pain?” he asked.

      “Practically the same as in your experience abroad. We do not render the patient unconscious, but prevent her from remembering anything that goes on.”

      Dr. Holmes, the attending physician, was just starting the treatment. Filling his hypodermic, he selected a spot on the patient’s arm, where it had been scrubbed and sterilized, and injected the narcotic.

      “How simply you do it all, here!” exclaimed Reinstrom in surprise and undisguised admiration. “You Americans are wonderful!”

      “Come—see a patient who is just recovering,” I added, much flattered by the praise, which, from a German physician, meant much.

      Reinstrom followed me out of the door and we entered a private room of the hospital where another woman patient lay in bed carefully watched by a nurse.

      “How do you do?” I nodded to the nurse in a modulated tone. “Everything progressing favorably?”

      “Perfectly,” she returned, as Reinstrom, Haynes and myself formed a little group about the bedside of the unconscious woman.

      “And you say they have no recollection of anything that happens?” asked Reinstrom.

      “Absolutely none—if the treatment is given properly,” I replied confidently.

      I picked up a piece of bandage which was the handiest thing about me and tied it quite tightly about the patient’s arm.

      As we waited, the patient, who was gradually coming from under the drug, roused herself.

      “What is that—it hurts!” she said putting her hand on the bandage I had tied tightly.

      “That is all right. Just a moment. I’ll take it off. Don’t you remember it?” I asked.

      She shook her head. I smiled at Reinstrom.

      “You see, she has no recollection of my tying the bandage on her arm,” I pointed out.

      “Wonderful!” ejaculated Reinstrom as we left the room.

      All the way back to the office he was loud in his praises and thanked us most heartily, as he put on his hat and coat and shook hands a cordial good-bye.

      Now comes the strange part of my story. After Reinstrom had gone, Dr. Holmes, the attending physician of the woman whom we had seen anesthetized, missed his syringe and the bottle of scopolamine.

      “Miss Sears,” he asked rather testily, “what have you done with the hypodermic and the scopolamine?”

      “Nothing,” she protested.

      “You must have done something.”

      She repeated that she had not.

      “Well, it is very strange then,” he said, “I am positive I laid the syringe and the bottle right here on this tray on the table.”

      Holmes, Miss Sears and Miss Stern all hunted, but it could not be found. Others had to be procured.

      I thought little of it at the time, but since then it has occurred to me that it might interest you, Professor Kennedy, and I give it to you for what it may be worth.

      It was early the next morning that I awoke to find Kennedy already up and gone from our apartment. I knew he must be at the laboratory, and, gathering the mail, which the postman had just slipped through the letter slot, I went over to the University to see him. As I looked over the letters to cull out my own, one in a woman’s handwriting on attractive notepaper addressed to him caught my eye.

      As I came up the path to the Chemistry Building I saw through the window that, in spite of his getting there early, he was finding it difficult to keep his mind on his work. It was the first time I had ever known anything to interfere with science in his life.

      I thought of the letter again.

      Craig had lighted a Bunsen burner under a large glass retort. But he had no sooner done so than he sat down on a chair and, picking up a book which I surmised might be some work on toxicology, started to read.

      He seemed not to be able, for the moment, to concentrate his mind and after a little while closed the book and gazed straight ahead of him. Again I thought of the letter, and the vision that, no doubt, he saw of Elaine making her pathetic appeal for his help.

      As he heard my footstep in the hall, it must have recalled him for he snapped the book shut and moved over quickly to the retort.

      “Well,” I exclaimed as I entered, “you are the early bird. Did you have any breakfast?”

      I tossed down the letters. He did not reply. So I became absorbed СКАЧАТЬ