Felix Brand opened his eyes, then let the lids quickly flutter down again. He was afraid to look about him, for he was no longer sure where he might awaken after what seemed to him to have been no more than an ordinary night’s sleep. Apprehensively he lifted one hand to his face and felt of his upper lip. There was no mustache upon it. Reassured, he opened his eyes again, and with deep relief gazed about his familiar bedroom.
“I guess it’s still the next day after yesterday,” he said to himself with profound satisfaction. For a moment he centered his attention upon himself. “And that damned Gordon has subsided,” he muttered. “I don’t feel him at all this morning. That’s promising. I’ve had a good night’s rest, now I’ll have a good day and tonight I’ll go to see Dr. Annister and let him begin—the devil!” Remembrance had flashed upon him of his last night’s interview with the physician.
“But he promised to help me and he’ll have to do it. I’ll do anything he says about Mildred—let her divorce me if he wants her to. A wife’s a nuisance. I’m sure I don’t want to be tied up with one. What did I do it for anyway?”
Notwithstanding his confidence that there had been no hiatus in his life since his last waking hours, Brand glanced with some trepidation at the date line of the morning paper. “That’s right,” he thought.
His eyes dropped down over the headlines and he stopped stock still, his face paling. “Dead!” he exclaimed aloud. “Now what’s to become of me!”
As he read the article, displayed prominently on the front page, which told of the death of Dr. Philip Annister, the famous nerve specialist, from heart-disease, he found that he had been, in all probability, the last person who had seen the physician alive. He remembered the sudden failure of strength which had sent the doctor staggering back into his arm-chair.
“I suppose,” he said to himself, and was aware of no feeling of compunction, “it was what I told him that did the business. If that damned whelp Gordon had let me alone—what am I to do now?”
When the architect appeared at his office one look at him told Henrietta that she was not to have a comfortable day. “Well, it’s my last one here,” she thought, and had occasion, as the hours wore on, to repeat the assurance to herself many times, for comfort’s sake. Doubly repellent though her service under him had become since that sad day of her sister’s disaster, Henrietta had felt, nevertheless, that justice demanded of her to continue in it until the time for which she had given notice should expire. So, loyal to her sense of fairness, she had kept on, while aversion deepened into loathing and, of late, was even touched with fear.
Over and over again, as her troubles and apprehensions pressed sharply upon her, did her thoughts recur to Hugh Gordon with longing remembrance of the sense of protection and security she had felt in his presence. So much did she dwell upon her memories of the hours they had spent together that in her secret heart the feeling toward him of intimacy and confidence grew ever stronger, and more and more frequently the thought would leap into her mind, “I wish Hugh Gordon were here.”