The Isle of Blood Read Online Free PDF Page B

please do as I requested and attend to our guest.”
    I did not obey immediately. My astonishment outweighed my loyalty.
    “But his symptoms…”
    “Are all attributable to the psychological distress produced by his belief that he had been poisoned.”
    “So you knew the whole time? But why didn’t you—”
    “Tell him the truth? Do you think the poor fool would have believed me if I had? He doesn’t know me from Adam. Might not he think I was part of Jack’s fiendish plan and keel over from a heart attack brought on by the enormity of his fear and the finality of all hope? There was a good possibility of that, and it was something Kearns probably anticipated, making his game all the more wickedly delicious. Imagine it, Will Henry! The lie sends him all the way here… and then the truth kills him! No, I saw through it at once and took the only moral path available to me—and so, even saints may sin that God’s will be done!”
    He pointed up the stairs. “Snap to, Will Henry.”
    So I did, though there wasn’t much snap in my to . He called after me, “Shut the door behind you and do not come down again .”
    “Yes, sir. I will, Dr. Warthrop—and I won’t.”
    I kept the first promise, at least.

     
    I sat in the parlor with our unconscious guest, restless and bored. I was not accustomed to being dispensed with, after being told ad nauseam by my master how indispensable I was. I was suffering also from the dreadful notion that Warthrop might be wrong, that there was such a poison as tipota and at any moment Kendall would keel over; I did not wish to watch a man’s heart explode in our parlor.
    But as the minutes ticked by, he continued to breathe—and I to stew. Why had the monstrumologist so abruptly dismissed me? What was in that box that he did not want me to see? He had never seemed particularly concerned about exposing me to the most disgusting and frightening of biologic phenomena—or to their handiwork. I was, like it or not, his apprentice, and had not he himself often said, “You must become accustomed to such things”?
    Ten minutes. Fifteen. Then the crash and rattle of the basement door flying open, the thunder of his footsteps down the hall, and Warthrop barreled into the room. He went straight to the divan and hauled Kendall upright.
    “Kendall!” he shouted into the man’s face. “Wake up!”
    Kendall’s eyes fluttered open, closed again. I noticed the doctor had donned a pair of gloves.
    “Did you open it, Kendall? Kendall! Did you touch what was inside?”
    He grabbed the unconscious man by the wrists, turned Kendall’s hands this way and that, and then bent low to sniff his fingers. He pulled up Kendall’s eyelids and squinted deep into the unseeing orbs.
    “What is it?” I asked.
    “At least three have touched it. Was one you, Kendall? Was it you?”
    The man answered with a soft moan, deep in his drug-induced dream. Warthrop snorted with frustration, turned on his heel, and marched from the room, pausing at the door to bark at me to remain where I was.
    “Watch him, Will Henry, and call me at once if he wakes. And, do not touch him under any circumstances!”
    I thought he would race back to the basement, but he fled in the opposite direction, and presently I heard him in the library, yanking old weathered tomes from the shelves and depositing them on the large table with thunderous wallops. I could hear him muttering to himself in agitation, but could not make out the words.
    I crept down the hall to the library door. He was standing with his back to me, hunched over a leather-bound book. He stiffened suddenly, sensing my presence, and whirled around.
    “What?” he cried. “What do you want now?”
    “Did you—Could I—”
    “Did I what ? Could you what ?”
    “Is there anything I can do for you, sir?”
    “I told you already what you could do,Will Henry. Yet here you are. Why are you here, Will Henry?”
    “I thought you might want me to—”
    “Interrupt my