EMMY [highty indignant, calling after him] Youre no beauty yourself. [To RIDGEON, much flustered] Theyve no manners: they think they can say what they like to me; and you set them on, you do. I’ll teach them their places. Here now: are you going to see that poor thing or are you not?

RIDGEON I tell you for the fiftieth time I wont see anybody. Send her away.

EMMY Oh, I’m tired of being told to send her away. What good will that do her?

RIDGEON Must I get angry with you, Emmy?

EMMY [coaxing] Come now: just see her for a minute to please me: theres a good boy. She’s given me half-a-crown. She thinks it’s life and death to her husband for her to see you.

RIDGEON Values her husband’s life at half-a-crown!

EMMY Well, it’s all she can afford, poor lamb. Them others think nothing of half-a-sovereign just to talk about themselves to you, the sluts! Besides, she’ll put you in a good temper for the day, because it’s a good deed to see her; and she’s the sort that gets round you.

RIDGEON Well, she hasnt done so badly. For half-a-crown she’s had a consultation with Sir Ralph Bloomfield Bonington and Cutler Walpole. Thats six guineas’ worth to start with. I dare say she’s consulted Blenkinsop too: thats another eighteenpence.

EMMY Then youll see her for me, wont you?

RIDGEON Oh, send her up and be hanged. [EMMY trots out, satisfied. RIDGEON calls] Redpenny!

REDPENNY [appearing at the door] What is it?

RIDGEON Theres a patient coming up. If she hasnt gone in five minutes, come in with an urgent call from the hospital for me. You understand: she’s to have a strong hint to go.

REDPENNY Right O! [He vanishes].

RIDGEON goes to the glass, and arranges his tie a little.

EMMY (announcing) Mrs Doobidad [RIDGEON leaves the glass and goes to the writing-table].

The lady comes in. EMMY goes out and shuts the door. RIDGEON, who has put on an impenetrable and rather distant professional manner, turns to the lady, and invites her, by a gesture, to sit down on the couch.

MRS DUBEDAT is beyond all demur an arrestingly good-looking young woman. She has something of the grace and romance of a wild creature, with a good deal of the elegance and dignity of a fine lady. RIDGEON, who is extremely susceptible to the beauty of women, instinctively assumes the defensive at once, and hardens his manner still more. He has an impression that she is very well dressed; but she has a figure on which any dress would look well, and carries herself with the unaffected distinction of a woman who has never in her life suffered from those doubts and fears as to her social position which spoil the manners of most middling people. She is tall, slender, and strong; has dark hair, dressed so as to look like hair and not like a bird’s nest or a pantaloon’s wig (fashion wavering just then between these two models); has unexpectedly narrow, subtle, dark-fringed eyes that alter her expression disturbingly when she is excited and, flashes them wide open; is softly impetuous in her speech and swift in her movements; and is just now in mortal anxiety. She carries a portfolio.

MRS DUBEDAT [in low urgent tones] Doctor —

RIDGEON [curtly] Wait. Before you begin, let me tell you at once that I can do nothing for you. My hands are full. I sent you that message by my old servant. You would not take that answer.

MRS DUBEDAT How could I?

RIDGEON You bribed her.

MRS DUBEDAT I —

RIDGEON That doesnt matter. She coaxed me to see you. Well, you must take it from me now that with all the good will in the world, I cannot undertake another case.

MRS DUBEDAT Doctor: you must save my husband. You must. When I explain to you, you will see that you must. It is not an ordinary case, not like any other case. He is not like anybody else in the world: oh, believe me, he is not. I can prove it to you: [fingering her portfolio] I have brought some things to shew you. And you can save him: the papers say you can.

RIDGEON Whats the matter? Tuberculosis?

MRS DUBEDAT Yes. His left lung —

RIDGEON Yes: you neednt tell me about that.

MRS DUBEDAT You can cure him, if only you will. It is true that you can, isnt it? [In great distress] Oh, tell me, please.

RIDGEON [worningly] You are going to be quiet and self-possessed, arnt you?

MRS DUBEDAT Yes. I beg your pardon. I know I shouldnt — [Giving way again] Oh, please, say that you c a n; and then I shall be all right.

RIDGEON [huffily] I am not a curemonger: if you want cures, you must go to the people who sell them. [Recovering himself, ashamed of the tone of his own voice] But I have at the hospital ten tuberculous patients whose lives I believe I can save.

MRS DUBEDAT Thank God!

RIDGEON Wait a moment. Try to think of those ten patients as ten shipwrecked men on a raft — a raft that is barely large enough to save them — that will not support one more. Another head bobs up through the waves at the side. Another man begs to be taken aboard. He implores the captain of the raft to save him. But the captain can only do that by pushing one of his ten off the raft and drowning him to make room for the new comer. That is what you are asking me to do.

MRS DUBEDAT But how can that be? I dont understand. Surely —

RIDGEON You must take my word for it that it is so. My laboratory, my staff, and myself are working at full pressure. We are doing our utmost. The treatment is a new one. It takes time, means, and skill; and there is not enough for another case. Our ten cases are already chosen cases. Do you understand what I mean by chosen?

MRS DUBEDAT Chosen. No: I cant understand.

RIDGEON (sternly] You m u s t understand. Youve got to understand and to face it. In every single one of those ten cases I have had to consider, not only whether the man could be saved, but whether he was worth saving. There were fifty cases to choose from; and forty had to be condemned to death. Some of the forty had young wives and helpless children. If the hardness of their cases could have saved them they would have been saved ten times over. Ive no doubt your case is a hard one: I can see the tears in your eyes [she hastily wipes her eyes]: I know that you have a torrent of entreaties ready for me the moment I stop speaking; but it’s no use.You must go to another doctor.

MRS DUBEDAT But can you give me the name of another doctor who understands your secret?

RIDGEON I have no secret: I am not a quack.

MRS DUBEDAT I beg your pardon: I didnt mean to say anything wrong. I dont understand how to speak to you. Oh, pray dont be offended.

RIDGEON [again a little ashamed] There! there! never mind. [He relaxes and sits down]. After all, I’m talking nonsense: I daresay I am a quack, a quack with a qualification. But my discovery is not patented.

MRS DUBEDAT Then can any doctor cure my husband? Oh, why dont they do it? I have tried so many: I have spent so much. If only you would give me the name of another doctor.

RIDGEON Every man in this street is a doctor. But outside myself and the handful of men I am training at St Anne‘s, there is nobody as yet who has mastered the opsonin treatment. And we are full up? I’m sorry; but that is all I can say. [Rising] Good morning.

MRS DUBEDAT (suddenly and desperately taking some drawings from her portfolio] Doctor: look at these. You understand drawings : you have good ones in your waiting-room. Look at them. They are his work.

RIDGEON It’s no use my looking. [He looks, all the same]. Hallo! [He takes one to the window and studies it]. Yes: this is the real thing. Yes, yes. [He looks at another and returns to her]. These are very clever. Theyre unfinished, arnt they?