Then he returned to the sofa, on which Arthur still lay inanimate.
“No progress?” he demanded of Hetzel.
“None. Can you send for a physician? Is there one near by?”
A third stroke of the bell. Hetzel’s acquaintance, Jim, entered.
“Run right over to Chambers Street Hospital, and tell them we want a doctor up here at once,” was Romer’s behest.
“Our friend’s in a pretty bad way,” he continued to Hetzel. “And, by Jove, his wife must be a maniac.”
“I don’t wonder at him,” said Hetzel. “I feel rather used up myself, after that strain in court. But her conduct is certainly incomprehensible.”
“The idea of pleading guilty, when I had things fixed up so neatly! She must be stark, raving mad. Insanity, by the way, was her defense at the former trial. I guess it was a bona fide one.”
“No doubt of it. But I suppose it’s too late to make that claim now—isn’t it?—now that the judge has ordered her plea of guilty to be recorded. Yet—yet it isn’t possible that she will really have to go to prison.”
“We might have a commission appointed.”