Suppose he turned informer?  Could he set a price, and that price Lily?  But he discarded that.  He was not selling now, he was earning.  He would set himself right first, and—­provided the government got the leaders before those leaders got him, as they would surely try to do—­he would have earned something, surely.

Lily had come to him once when he called.  She might come again, when he had earned her.

Doyle sat back in his chair and watched him.  He saw that he had gone to pieces under defeat, and men did strange things at those times.  With uncanny shrewdness he gauged Akers’ reaction; his loss of confidence and, he surmised, his loyalty.  He would follow his own interest now, and if he thought that it lay in turning informer, he might try it.  But it would take courage.

When the conference broke up Doyle was sure of where his man stood.  He was not worried.  They did not need Akers any longer.  He had been a presentable tool, a lay figure to give the organization front, and they had over-rated him, at that.  He had failed them.  Doyle, watching him contemptuously, realized in him his own fallacious judgment, and hated Akers for proving him wrong.

Outside the building Doyle drew the Russian aside, and spoke to him.  Ross started, then grinned.

“You’re wrong,” he said.  “He won’t try it.  But of course he may, and we’ll see that he doesn’t get away with it.”

From that time on Louis Akers was under espionage.

CHAPTER XLVI

Doctor Smalley was by way of achieving a practice.  During his morning and evening office hours he had less and less time to read the papers and the current magazines in his little back office, or to compare the month’s earnings, visit by visit, with the same month of the previous year.

He took to making his hospital rounds early in the morning, rather to the outrage of various head nurses, who did not like the staff to come a-visiting until every counterpane was drawn stiff and smooth, every bed corner a geometrical angle, every patient washed and combed and temperatured, and in the exact center of the bed.

Interns were different.  They were like husbands.  They came and went, seeing things at their worst as well as at their best, but mostly at their worst.  Like husbands, too, they developed a sort of philosophy as to the early morning, and would only make occasional remarks, such as: 

“Cyclone struck you this morning, or anything?”

Doctor Smalley, being a bachelor, was entirely blind to the early morning deficiencies of his wards.  Besides, he was young and had had a cold shower and two eggs and various other things, and he saw the world at eight A.M. as a good place.  He would get into his little car, whistling, and driving through the market square he would sometimes stop and buy a bag of apples for the children’s ward, or a bunch of fall flowers.  Thus armed, it was impossible for the most austere of head nurses to hate him.