"Sir Melvin! Try to wake up, sir. Where have you been? Are you ill, sir?"
Flager found strength to move his head from one side to the other.
"No," he said. "I just want to sleep."
And with a deep groan he let his swollen eyelids droop again, and sank back into soothing abysses of delicious rest.
When he woke up again he was in his own bed, in his own bedroom. For a long time he lay without moving, wallowing in the heavenly comfort of the soft mattress and cool linen, savouring the last second of sensual pleasure that could be squeezed out of the most beautiful awakening that he could remember.
"He's coming round," said a low voice at last; and with a sigh Flager opened his eyes.
His bed seemed to be surrounded with an audience such as a seventeenth-century monarch might have beheld at a levee. There was his valet, his secretary, his doctor, a nurse, and a heavy and stolid man of authoritative appearance who held an unmistakable bowler hat. The doctor had a hand on his pulse, and the others stood by expectantly.
"All right, Sir Melvin," said the physician. "You may talk for a little while now, if you want to, but you mustn't excite yourself. This gentleman here is a detective who wants to ask you a few questions."
The man with the bowler hat came nearer.
"What happened to you, Sir Melvin?" he asked.