“That’s no help. This is the first time I’ve heard his name.” He paused. “Is there any chance she could be doing something completely ordinary, like going to the dentist?”

“On two occasions, both when you were on duty at the hospital, she went back to your home around dinner time and then returned to the Memorial Drive building to spend the evening.”

“Oh.”

“Do you want me to give you written reports?” Kittredge asked.

“No. Don’t rush me,” he snapped. At the detective’s request he wrote a check for one hundred and seventy-eight dollars, each stroke of the pen more difficult than the last.

That night at eleven o’clock Helen Fultz came to him.

“Dr. Meomartino,” the old nurse said.

He saw that she was pale and sweaty, slightly shocky-looking. “What is it, Helen?”

“I’m afraid I’m bleeding quite a lot.”

He made her lie down with her legs elevated.

“Did you ever have those x-rays taken?”

“Yes. I’ve been going to the clinic here,” she said.

He sent for packed red blood cells and for her records and films. The x-rays had shown no ulcer but had revealed a small aortic aneurysm, a tiny ballooning in the main trunk arising from the left ventricle of the heart. The clinic people had believed the aneurysm too small to be responsible for the bleeding, which they had felt was caused by an ulcer that didn’t show in the x-ray. They had placed her on a bland diet.

He examined her abdomen, allowing his touch to become his sight, and he knew they were wrong.

He wanted a senior surgeon’s advice. He saw on the bulletin board that the Visiting Surgeon on call was Miriam Parkhurst, but when he telephoned he was told she was on her way to the Mount Auburn Hospital in Cambridge.

He called Lewis Chin and learned that the Visiting was in New York City. Dr. Kender, he knew, was attending a transplantation conference in Cleveland at which he expected to hire his own successor. There was no other senior man available.

Silverstone was in the hospital.

He had the Chief Resident paged and they examined her together. He guided Adam’s hand until it had found the aneurysm. “How large, would you say?”

Silverstone whistled soundlessly. “At least nine cms., as a guess.”

The bloods came and Silverstone set up an I. V. for them while he tried the telephone again, this time reaching Miriam Parkhurst. They had had to summon her out of the scrub room at Mount Auburn and she was very testy about having wasted four minutes of abrading her hands, but she quieted when he informed her about Helen Fultz.

“God, that woman was a ward nurse when I was a house officer,” she said.

“Well, you’d better get here as soon as you can,” he told her. “The aneurysm can let go at any time.”