My face fell, obviously enough, I suppose.
“By the way,” he remarked casually, “you know, of course, that the child died very shortly after it was born?”
What was he saying in that matter-of-fact voice? what unimpassioned thunderbolt launching from the blue of his little spectacled eyes? A quick sharp vertigo seemed to seize my brain. I stared stupidly at him.
“Died!” I muttered. “O, you must be mistaken!”
“Wait,” he said. “I keep, and have always kept, a minute record of my cases. I can verify it in an instant.”
He went to a shelf, selected from it one of several thin manuscript volumes, and rapidly skipped over its leaves.
“Here it is,” he said. “February 7th, 1860: Carey (Georgina), White Square: obstetric: child, male; died two days later. Certified cause, atelectasis pulmonum.”
He shut the book with a snap, returned it to its shelf, and faced round on me, his hands under his coat tails.
“Anything more I can do for you?”
“But,” I stammered, “if—if the child died, it must have been buried?”