"Don't--the man is ill! Oh, how dreadful! Loosen his collar--open the window. I wonder if he needs a doctor," and she stepped to the electric button of the bell.
"There might be one in the hotel," said Aksakoff, as Joan and Askew obeyed her directions. And from the tone of his voice she knew that there was one in the hotel. "It really seems to be a kind of fit," said Aksakoff, looking at the now unconscious man. "Yet he appeared to be quite well a few minutes ago."
Leah did not hear. She was already at the door issuing hurried instructions to a waiter, whose smile had vanished. When she came back the two men had placed Demetrius on the sofa, where he lay breathing heavily, his face white and his lips purple; not a pleasant sight by any means, as Askew thought.
"Had not you ladies better retire?" he suggested.
"No, no!" they cried in one breath. "We must help."
"Only the doctor can do that--if there is one," said Aksakoff, observing his handiwork on the sofa with a critical eye.
Then, at the tail of a triple rap, entered the fat proprietor of the Henri Trois, scared in looks and importantly fussy in manner. Behind him glided a spick-and-span man, not unlike Demetrius, and unmistakably Tartar.
"Dr. Helfmann happened to be luncheoning," explained M. Gravier, "fortunately. What is the matter, madame?"
Helfmann soon explained that. He felt the pulse of the patient, laid a gentle hand on a weakly-beating heart, and turned up the purple eyelids. Askew and Aksakoff stood aside with the proprietor. Lady Jim and Joan bent forward with pale faces and clasped hands, anxious for the verdict.
"A kind of fit," explained the doctor; "he will be insensible for two--three hours."