“Yes. Well, take a look at these scripts,” Colfax said. “It’s written out. When I checked back I saw that every single prescription was exactly alike, as if the man who wrote them had copied them all at one sitting.”

“He made a mistake, though,” Hartigan said. “When Mr. Colfax read the prescription to me over the phone I knew it was a phoney right away. He used a six-numeral Federal number. We don’t have that many physicians in Massachusetts.”

“Did you pick up the person who passed these?” Kender asked.

Hartigan shook his head.

“I asked him some questions the last time he came in, just before I called the police,” Colfax said. “I must have frightened him away.” He smiled. “I’m a lousy detective.”

“On the contrary,” Hartigan said. “There aren’t many druggists sharp enough to pick up something like this. Can you describe the man to Dr. Robinson?”

Colfax hesitated. “Well, he was a Negro . . .” He looked away uncomfortably.

Look at our faces, Spurgeon told him silently.

“He had a mustache. I’m afraid I don’t remember much else.”

Speed Nightingale?

Hartigan smiled. “I realize that isn’t very much to go on, Dr. Robinson.”

It would be unfair to name Nightingale, Spurgeon realized; there were a great many mustached black men, a number of whom used drugs. “It could be anybody.”

Hartigan nodded. “A lot of people can get their hands on blank prescriptions. Workers at the printing plant, people all over the hospital, patients and their families when you people turn your backs.” He sighed.

Dr. Kender looked at his watch and pushed his chair back from the desk. “Is there anything else, gentlemen?”

Both of the visitors smiled and stood.

“In that case, I’m afraid that Dr. Robinson and I have a conference to attend,” Dr. Kender said.

At 10:30 Spurgeon sat in one of the side chairs at the long, highly polished table and nibbled cookies and sipped cola, gazing straight ahead at a wall decorated with a drug company print of Marcello Malpighi, discoverer of capillary circulation, who looked a little like Dr. Sack wearing a beard and a rug.

They straggled in, one by one, and he finally joined them in rising for the entrance of Dr. Longwood.

Meomartino presented a case, a long one.

Meomartino presented another goddam case. Not the case. Maybe, he thought prayerfully, they wouldn’t take it up. Just perhaps there would be no time left, but when he lifted his eyes to the clock he saw there would be more than enough time, and his stomach gave a lurch and he thought he would be the first intern in the history of the hospital to be ill all over the shiny table and the bottles of Pepsi and the cookies and the Chief of Surgery.