“Then you think he may be right?” shot out Kennedy quickly.
Haughton glanced nervously from Kennedy to me.
“Really,” he answered, “you see how impossible it is for me to have an opinion? You and Denison have been over the ground. You know much more about it than I do. I am afraid I shall have to defer to you.”
Again we heard the bell downstairs, and a moment later a cheery voice, as Mrs. Woods met some one down in the foyer, asked, “How is the patient to-night?”
We could not catch the reply.
“Dr. Bryant, my physician,” put in Haughton. “Don’t go. I will assume the responsibility for your being here. Hello, Doctor. Why, I’m much the same to-night, thank you. At least no worse since I took your advice and went to bed.”
Dr. Bryant was a bluff, hearty man, with the personal magnetism which goes with the making of a successful physician. He had mounted the stairs quietly but rapidly, evidently prepared to see us.
“Would you mind waiting in this little dressing room?” asked the doctor, motioning to another, smaller room adjoining.
He had taken from his pocket a little instrument with a dial face like a watch, which he attached to Haughton’s wrist. “A pocket instrument to measure blood pressure,” whispered Craig, as we entered the little room.
While the others were gathered about Haughton, we stood in the next room, out of earshot. Kennedy had leaned his elbow on a chiffonier. As he looked about the little room, more from force of habit than because he thought he might discover anything, Kennedy’s eye rested on a glass tray on the top in which lay some pins, a collar button or two, which Haughton had apparently just taken off, and several other little unimportant articles.