Interrupted Sir Heron's decisive, "Very well. No need for a taxi. You can come down in my car. Where are you telephoning from?"
"The Temple."
"Then be here in twenty minutes."
3
Snatching his hat and his coat, clicking off the light, and slamming his oak behind him, Ronnie darted downstairs into Pump Court, through Pump Court and up Middle Temple Lane toward the barred gate which gives on to Fleet Street. In seconds he was at the side door of the gate--through it--and into a taxi. In seconds he was whirling away from the deserted law courts, past the gleaming front of the Gaiety Theater, down the Strand.
He wanted speed--speed. Not till they were out of the Strand and through Trafalgar Square did thought oust action from his mind. And then thought was fearful--terrifying. Again, as on that night when he and Aliette had taxied from Embankment House to Bruton Street, he saw his mother dying. But now he saw himself guilty of her death.
Harley Street reached, a long blue car purred past his taxi and pulled up a hundred yards ahead. Reaching the car, the taxi stopped. Ronnie leaped out; flung a couple of half-crowns to his driver; leaped up the steps of the Georgian house; and rang. The door opened instantaneously; revealing--behind the portly form of the butler--a long tessellated hall. Down the staircase into the hall--his dinner-party abandoned--came the punctual specialist.
"That you, Cavendish? I sha'n't be a moment." Sir Heron, already in his fur coat, his slouch hat pulled on anyhow, disappeared round the newel post of the staircase toward his consulting room; and reëmerged, with a battered black medicine-case in his hand. "Come along. We can talk in the car. In you go----"
The butler closed the door of the limousine behind them; and the doctor's chauffeur, obviously preinstructed as to their destination, turned the long Rolls-Royce bonnet south.
"Another hemorrhage, you say?" Sir Heron lit himself a cigarette; and in the red spurt of the match, Ronnie could see that his face was troubled. "I'm glad you telephoned."