“Exactly, sir,” the lawyer agreed. “It will also see the end of Miss Russell’s immediate anxieties. Upon my word, since Mr. Spanton’s regrettable death, she has been both father and mother to my lonely young client. A practical woman, sir, Miss Russell! And the excessiveness of her apprehensions, if I may so phrase it, must be excused. She has begged me to remain here till midnight, in order that I may witness to Miss Spanton’s—er—vitality, and also in order to obtain Miss Spanton’s signature to certain necessary documents. I should not be surprised, sir, if she requested you also to remain. She is not a woman to omit precautions.”
“I’m afraid I can’t stop till twelve,” I said. The conversation ceased, and I fell into meditation.
I do not mind admitting that I was deeply impressed by what I will call the romantic quality of the situation. I thought of old Spanton, who had begun with something less than nothing and died virtually the owner of three daily papers and twenty-five weeklies and monthlies. I thought of Spantons, Ltd., and their colossal offices spreading half round Salisbury Square. Why, I even had a copy of the extra special edition of the Evening Gazette in my pocket! Do any of you fellows remember Spanton starting the Evening Gazette? He sold three hundred thousand the first day. And now old Spanton was dead—you know he died of drink, and there was nothing left of the Spanton blood except this girl lying there on the bed, and the man in Australia. And all the Spanton editors, and the Spanton sub-editors, and the Spanton artists, and the Spanton reporters and compositors, and the Spanton rotary presses, and the Spanton paper mills, and the Spanton cyclists, were slaving and toiling to put eighty thousand a year into this girl’s purse. And there she was, feeble and depressed, and solitary, except for Miss Russell, and the man in Australia perhaps hoping she would die; and there was Miss Russell, worrying and fussing and apprehending and fearing. And the entire hotel oblivious of the romantic, I could almost say the pathetic, situation. And then I thought of Miss Spanton’s future, burdened with those three millions, and I wondered if those three millions would buy her happiness.
“Here is the medicine, doctor,” said Miss Russell, entering the drawing-room hurriedly, and handing me the bottle with the chemist’s label on it. I went with her into the bedroom. The beautiful Adelaide Spanton was already better, and she admitted as much when I administered the medicine—two minims of a one per cent. solution of trinitrin, otherwise nitro-glycerine, the usual remedy for pseudo-angina.
Miss Russell took the bottle from my hand, corked it and placed it on the dressing-table. Shortly afterwards I left the hotel. The lawyer had been right in supposing that Miss Russell would ask me to stay, but I was unable to do so. I promised, however, to return in an hour, all the while insisting that there was not the slightest danger for the patient.
IV.
It was 10.30 when I came back.
“Second floor!” I said carelessly to the lift boy, and he whirled me upwards; the Grand Babylon lifts travel very fast.
“Here you are, sir,” he murmured respectfully, and I stepped out.
“Is this the second floor?” I asked suddenly.