“Nonsense, Doctor! Mrs. Atkins isn’t as unreasonable as that. I’m sure she’ll be glad to see you. Now, remember, we shall expect you at seven sharp to-morrow.”
“All right,” I called back to him.
I have given such a long account of this trifling incident, because for some time afterwards I could not get the young fellow’s face out of my mind, and I kept imagining all sorts of possible, and impossible, reasons for his changed looks. Could it be that he suspected the murdered man to have been a friend of his wife’s, and feared that she might have some guilty knowledge of his death?
As I realised how such a thought would torture him, I wanted to go at once and tell him how my first grave suspicions had been confirmed, till now I was fully convinced of Argot’s guilt. But, fearing that some injudicious word might show him that I had guessed the cause of his anxiety, I refrained. That evening after dining quietly at the Club with an old school-fellow I walked slowly home, down Madison Avenue, which, with its long rows of houses, almost all of which were closed up for the summer, presented an extremely dreary aspect. Although it was barely nine o’clock, the streets in that part of the town were well nigh deserted, everyone who could do so having fled from the city. The night was extremely dark, damp and hot. As I was nearing my office, I observed that the back door of the Rosemere was being cautiously opened, and a woman’s head, covered with a thick veil, peeped out. Madame Argot, I thought, and so it proved. Having satisfied herself that her lord and master was not in sight, she darted across the street, and disappeared in my house. I hurried up, so as not to keep her waiting, and, as I did so, I fancied I heard some one running behind me. Turning quickly around, I detected nothing suspicious. The only person I could see was a very fat man, whom I had passed several blocks back. Was he nearer than he should have been? I couldn’t tell. At any rate, he was still far enough away for it to be impossible to distinguish his features, but as I was sure that he was not Argot, I did not wait for him to come up with me. On entering the reception room, I found Madame, still heavily veiled, huddled up in a corner, where she thought she could not be seen from the street. I told her to go into the office and, approaching the window, I looked out. There was still nobody in sight except the fat man, and he had crossed over, and was ambling quietly along on the other side of the way. He was almost opposite now, and, after looking at him critically, I decided that it was too improbable that the running foot steps I had heard following me had been his. But whose were they, then? I trusted that the murder had not affected my nerves, also. At any rate, I decided to take the precaution of shutting and bolting the window, and of pulling down the blind, none of which things, during this hot weather, had I been in the habit of doing. But I did not intend to give that white-faced apparition, to whom I attributed the mysterious footsteps, the chance of falling upon me unaware, especially not while Madame Argot was on the premises.
“Well, how goes it?” I inquired, when I at last rejoined her.
“Oh, much, much better, Meestair.”
I saw, indeed, when I examined the cut, that it was healing splendidly.
“Meestair Docteur,” she began as soon as I had settled down to dress her wound, “’usban’ ’e come ’ere zis mornin’?”
“Yes,” I assented.
“Ana what ’e say, Meestair?”