Then who was she? Sister or mother? If not, what claim had she to be admitted to the bedside of the "dangerously-sick un-friend-recognising patient?" She had better see the Chief-Head-Over-Superintendent, and if he consented, perhaps!
So she drove off again disheartened. The Chief-Head-Over-Superintendent was out, and after waiting for him till she grew sick and cold she determined to follow him to the Medical College. Here she was met by more formalities, to which was added a suggestion that, not being a relation, she should go to the British consulate and get a certificate that she was of the "due-respectable-and-to-be-admitted-friends."
And then, suddenly, to her despair at the delay, came the memory of Pagenheim. It was silly of her not to have thought of him before. Yes. She would go to Pagenheim; he was her only hope.
She was shown into a room stuffed full of furniture, where a florid, bearded man had evidently just been smoking.
He sat looking with immense interest at the card she had sent in.
"Mein Gott!" he said, going on in fairly idiomatic English. "But your names! T r e s--s i l----"
"Tressilian," said Helen impatiently.
"Tres--silian! Now, Miss, what does that mean? Tre--three--sil-i-an. Does it mean three fools? Wass fur ein--Gott in Himmel! you are crying--Gnädige Fraulein, pardon."
It was the truth. Helen, worn out by her long and hungry journey, disappointed, driven from pillar to post, had found it too much that her last hope should waste precious time in philological studies.
"I beg your pardon," she said, stifling her tears, "but I have come all the way from England to see Dr. Ramsay, and now I cannot get at him. Do help me if you can."