“Or an ambulance?”
“No, no, a car. I want to get him to his own house—quite close here. His own doctor—knows all about this. Sir Horace Spavage. Heart—I’m afraid . . . a car . . .”
“I’ve got a car here,” said a newcomer who had pushed his way through the crowd and heard the last words. “A limousine—he’ll be comfortable in that.” (“Not much use to him, though,” he muttered to himself.) “Lend a hand, somebody; I’ll take his shoulders. Put a hand under his head, will you?”
Very carefully the limp form was carried to the car and deposited on the soft cushions of the back seat. Hessel got in beside it and took his friend’s hand, which felt to him deathly cold. The owner of the car got in beside the driver and in less than two minutes they had reached Queen Anne’s Gate. Fortunately, as Hessel thought, Inez was not in and Sir Garth was carried into the morning-room and laid on the big sofa. There was no lift in the house and Hessel did not like, he told Golpin, to risk the climb to the second floor.
Within ten minutes Sir Horace Spavage had arrived. One glance at the white and agonized face was enough.
“Dear, dear!” he said. “So soon?”
Kneeling down by the sofa, he picked up one of his patient’s hands, held the wrist for a few seconds between his fingers and thumb, and laid it quietly down again. Then, undoing the front of the shirt and vest, he laid his hand on the bare chest and tapped it firmly with the rigid fingers of his other hand. Even to Hessel’s untutored ears, the sound produced was curiously muffled and dull. Sir Horace rose slowly to his feet, putting away the stethoscope which he had automatically slipped round his neck.
“Yes; as I thought,” he said. “The aneurism has burst.”
The funeral of Sir Garth Fratten took place on the following Monday. The actual burial was at Brooklands and was attended only by members of the family and a few close personal friends. Ryland and Inez were the chief mourners, Ryland looking very subdued and unhappy, and Inez worn out with misery but erect and calm—and very beautiful in her black clothes. A few distant cousins had come to establish a relationship which the dead man had allowed to remain distant during his life, whilst Leopold Hessel, Laurence Mangane, Sir Horace Spavage, and Mr. Septimus Menticle, the family solicitor, were also present.