“A boil lanced,” Firebaugh continued. “A minor thing, but it can become complicated. In any event, we began talking about things. Life in general. The condition of the world. And I told him my secret, the thing that I knew to be true but that I believe for years I hid even from myself.”

“Pray don’t leave us hanging,” Julian said when Firebaugh was silent.

“I detest people,” Firebaugh replied, his eyes slightly narrowed. “I have never married, I have no children, my mother and father are deceased and my only relative—a sister—is married and lives in the colonies, in Boston. I was never meant to be a physician to human beings. One of my instructors told me as much, many years ago. That my so-called ‘bedside manner’ was, as he put it, somewhere between execrable and non-existent. Oh yes, the people element of medicine is what I have failed at. It’s my nature, to want to work alone. To want to be alone. I find great comfort and pleasure in solitude … yet to continue to rise in stature as a physician in this city, one must at least pretend to have care and empathy for his patients.” He shrugged. “Not I. I am simply of a medical mind, and I do not wish to be bothered by the blatherings, woes and corruptions of the sick.”

“Interesting,” said Julian. “A doctor who despises the idea of having living patients!” Matthew thought he couldn’t have phrased it better himself.

“Why didn’t you simply become a researcher?” Victor asked, obviously finding some value in this conversation. “You needn’t have dealt with patients in that regard.”

“Money issues,” Firebaugh replied. “Let us say, I have grown accustomed to a certain standard of living. Laboratory researchers find their income and their advancement quite limited. I choose not to accept limits. At one point I expressed these feelings to the vice admiral, and obviously I made an impression. Therefore when the vice admiral asked me to lunch at his club one day and broached the subject of a particular book he was proposing to seize—and the fact that a great deal of money would surely be in the offing—I listened with open ears. And so I am here, gentlemen, ready to turn my medical mind to research beyond my wildest dreams … researching items that, as the vice admiral has said, have the power to change the world.”

Yes, but would it be a world worth living in? Matthew wanted to ask. The answer given to himself was: Definitely not.

Merda laughed. “That’s a knee-slapper, doc. Damned if I ever met a doctor who wanted to kill people instead of heal them.”