"No, you don't—not really," Anne assured him. "Up you're coming; slow, maybe, but sure. A nice nurse I'd be to let you slip back two feet for one!"
And she sniffed with her little blunt nose that reminded him of an intelligent pug's.
The worst of it, the thing that aggravated him almost to frenzy at these times, was that he still had morphia in his possession—a large supply of that and cocaine, utterly unsuspected by Anne, for all her shrewdness. He almost chuckled aloud sometimes as he lay watching her during one of his black fits. His spirit did chuckle, as he thought how he had outwitted even her, the little "Bush-Sleuth," in this matter. But he did not dare to take an extra dose, even by mouth. She would have seen instantly—and nosed out the precious stuff that was his dearest earthly possession. He was quite sure of that. It cowed him from taking the morphia that he had secreted, even during those times of anguish, when sometimes she stepped into the next room for a moment to fetch something and he could have swallowed a tablet easily—it was within reach always. No; he did not dare for the sake of one moment's self-indulgence, to run the risk of still greater sufferings. So he lay there, enduring, cursing silently, waiting, ever waiting, for the time to come when he should be his own man again. Then hey! for some distant country—a long journey en garçon—with a glittering, brand-new needle, and package on package of the little flat, white, innocent-looking tablets that dissolved so easily in a teaspoonful of warm water.
There were no more drives now: he was too weak. Anne said that in about six weeks he would begin to feel more normal, though he would still be weak. He would feel depressed and weak for a long time after his system was rid of the poison, she warned him with her admirable frankness. Six weeks more of it! Good God! He wondered that he could keep his hands from her when she said such things to him in that matter-of-fact, casual way. But he waited. Chance was a good deity for such as he to pray to. One never knew what might happen. So he lay there and said curt, impious prayers to Chance that the God of Whimsy would help him to his own undoing.
Chance himself serves sometimes one Overlord, sometimes another. Sometimes he plays henchman to Ormuzd, sometimes to Ahriman. This time he elected to do the bidding of Ahriman.
On the fifteenth day after Chesney's enforced confession to the little nurse, there came a wire from London for Anne Harding. It said:
"Your mother ill—pneumonia. Come at once."
There was nothing else for it. She had to go, and by the next train. She loved her mother, whom she supported by her cleverness, very dearly; yet there was almost an equal grief in her strongly professional little heart at leaving a case so difficult, which she had managed with such skill.
She tried to get Chesney to promise her on his word of honour to "act straight" with the nurse who would supplant her, promising that if he did so she would return as soon as her mother was well enough, and take up his case again. But he would only smile at her that faintly jeering smile, which she felt in the marrow of her small bones meant mischief.
"Your word of honour—your word of honour as a gentleman that you'll play fair," she urged vehemently, "or I swear I'll not come back!"