Five minutes later the door was opened by the Doctor himself, and quite at home there, Clive Reed sprang in to face his old friend standing in dressing-gown and slippers.
“How is she?” he cried, in a low excited whisper. “How is she?” repeated the Doctor, as he closed the door. “Here, come this way.”
He took a chamber candlestick from where he had set it down on the hall table, and led on into his consulting-room, with its walls adorned with grim-looking engravings of medical magnates, and its table with books and inkstand, two stethoscopes standing upright on the chimneypiece like a pair of very ancient attenuated vases.
“You came up at once, then?” said the Doctor grimly.
“Of course. I caught the mail; but don’t keep me—in suspense,” Clive was about to say, but he checked himself, for positions had altered now, and he had no right to be in suspense, so he used the word “waiting.”
“Waiting!” said the Doctor. “What do you mean?”
“Your telegram—about Janet. Is she very bad?”
“Confound Janet for a weak-minded idiot!” cried the Doctor testily. “Nothing of the kind. I wired to you to come up about this cursed mine.”
“Oh!” ejaculated Clive, with a feeling of relief. “Your telegram explained nothing, and I thought the poor girl was ill.”
“Ill! No: I wish she were. Be a lesson to her—a hussy. Now, then, what am I to do? Nice business this, sir. Here, on the strength of your representations, I put a life’s savings in that cursed mine, and they’re pretty well all swept away.”