She did not reply. Her lips parted but no sound issued forth.
Again the voice spoke in her ear. “Are you there?”
The “yes” she uttered in reply was little more than a hoarse gasp. And then: “I hear you quite distinctly.” There was a click at the other end. Slowly, as in a daze, she hung up the receiver. Not another word passed.
She did not leave the apartment that day, but spent most of the time with her niece, whose indisposition was promptly diagnosed as an acute attack of indigestion by the learned and complacent physician, who dosed her and went his way. He ordered her to remain in bed; he would run in and see her in the morning. If anything, ah!—a—alarming turned up, he murmured to Mrs. Carstairs, she was to call him at once. Not likely, of course, said he, nothing to be apprehensive about, but—well, you never can tell. Resistance not yet fully restored,—and, “after all, as I've said all along, Mrs. Carstairs, one's own resistance is the best chemistry going, and one has to fill his own prescription when it comes to that sort of thing, don't you know.”
Being a very fashionable doctor he gave her pyromedan to bring down the temperature in a hurry, and codeine to quiet the pain.
Davenport Carstairs seldom reached his home before six or half-past. It was his custom,—if business happened to be indulgent,—to drop in at his favourite club about four in the afternoon. On this afternoon, however, he drove straight home from the office. The clock in the hall was striking four as he entered the apartment. The afternoon newspapers were under his arm,—four or five of them.
“Has Mrs. Carstairs come in, Hollowell?” he asked.
“Mrs. Carstairs did not go out today, sir. Miss Hansbury is ill.”
Ordinarily Carstairs would have been disturbed by this information. He had been gravely worried over his niece's condition. Hollowell's supplementary statement, however, appeared to have fallen on deaf ears.
“Say that I'm home, Hollowell, and in my room.”