“I think he’s gone, or nearly so,” said the dresser, a fair young man, his face flushing. He had asked for the screen, usually drawn around the dying or dead.
“Nothing of the sort,” said Hugh. He felt the patient’s pulse, listened at his heart, opened the closed eyelids, placed his hand lightly on his brow, which was cold and clammy, then ordered him to be undressed, himself assisting the nurses to rip up the coat-sleeves.
There were no injuries. It was a case of concussion of the brain. The groom was having his slight wounds dressed in the out-patients’ department; and Hugh learned from him that his master, whom he appeared to hold greatly in awe, was Sir Roderick Pym, one of the partners in the well-known banking firm of Pym, Clithero and Pym. He had a town house in a West-end square, and a country house in Surrey, where he mostly lived. He was staying in town for a few days, and had insisted on driving towards the City to-day, in spite of the warning issued by the police to the public. Moreover, he insisted on driving a thoroughbred mare, who no sooner got among quite a small assemblage of roughs than she kicked up her heels and was off. The groom stuck to the tilbury till the final crash, but his master fell out shortly before. That was all he knew (or chose to tell). He was a town groom. He never went into the country. He would return home and tell Sir Roderick’s housekeeper. She would come round and see about their master.
Hugh went thoughtfully back to the ward, and standing at the foot of the bed gazed at the solemn, set face of the unconscious man. He was interested—unusually so. This old man’s aquiline, grave face was full of expression. Peaceful and composed as it was now, it was the countenance of one who had suffered, and suffered deeply.
“His eyelids quivered a little when the ice-bag was applied, sir,” said the nurse who was watching the patient.
Hugh was once more gravely examining the case, when the stout, matronly personage, in a high cap and huge white apron, who was called the “sister” of the ward, came from the little room at its end, through the square window of which she could see all that was going on in the long room with the rows of beds.
“I thought I would give you these, Mr. Paull. I would rather not have anything to do with them,” she said, handing Hugh a massive gold watch and chain, a purse, and some letters and papers.
“I will see to them, sister,” he said.
Giving directions as to the immediate treatment of Sir Roderick, he returned to his room to lock them away in a small iron safe, where certain of the hospital books and cases of instruments were kept. The watch was a hunter. It struck him that the glass might be broken. It was. He shook out the fragments; then, seeing a locket attached to the chain, he opened that.
The glass of this was intact, and covered the coloured photograph of a woman’s face—sweet, bright, fair, with smiling lips and dark eyes, that even on lifeless paper looked mischief and pretty defiance.