"I can do it now."
"Do what?" asked Allison, with difficulty.
"Amputate your hand. There's no chance."
The blue and white young woman then on duty came forward. "I beg your
pardon, Doctor, but Colonel Kent left strict orders not to operate
without his consent."
The strange man disdained to answer the nurse, but turned to Allison
again. "Do you know where your father can be reached by wire?"
"My father--is dead," Allison insisted. He closed his eyes and would
answer no more questions. In the next room, he heard the nurse and the
doctor talking in low tones that did not carry. Only one word rose above
the murmur: "delusion."
Allison repeated it to himself as he sank into the darkness again,
wondering what it meant and of whom they were speaking.
Slowly he recovered from the profound shock, but his hand did not
improve. He had an idea that the ceaseless bandaging and unbandaging
were dangerous as well as painful, but said nothing. He knew that his
career had come to its end before it had really begun, but it did not
seem to affect him in any way. He considered it unemotionally and
impersonally, when he thought of it at all.
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