These were some of the considerations which, flashing through his mind, prevented his giving way to righteous wrath. He most certainly would not allow Arthur Sloane to eliminate him from the situation. He sat down again.
The nervous wreck made himself more understandable.
"Perhaps, Jarvis," he said, shrinking to one side like a man in sudden pain, "the gentleman can't see how to reach that large door. A little more light, half an inch-not a fraction more!"
"Don't bother," Hastings told Jarvis. "I'm not going quite yet."
"Leaping crime!" moaned Mr. Sloane, digging deeper into the pillows, "Frantic imps!"
"I hope I won't distress you too much," the detective apologized grimly, "if I ask you a few questions. Fact is, I must. I'm investigating the circumstances surrounding what may turn out to be a baffling crime, and, irrespective of your personal wishes, Mr. Sloane, I can't let go of it. This is a serious business——"
The sick man sat up in bed with surprising abruptness.
"Serious business! Serious saints!—Jarvis, the eau de cologne!—You think I don't know it? They make a slaughter-house of my lawn. They make a morgue of my house. They hold a coroner's inquest in my parlour. They're in there now—live people like ravens, and one dead one. They cheat the undertaker to plague me. They wreck me all over again. They give me a new exhaustion of the nerves. They frighten my daughter to death.—Jarvis, the smelling salts. Shattered saints, Jarvis! Hurry! Thanks.—They rig up lies which, Tom Wilton, my old and trusted friend, tells me, will incriminate Berne Webster. They sit around a corpse in my house and chatter by the hour. You come in here and make Jarvis nearly blind me.
"And, then, then, by the holy, agile angels! you think you have to persuade me it's a serious business! Never fear! I know it!—Jarvis, the bromide, quick! Before I know it, they'll drive me to opiates.—Serious business! Shrivelled and shrinking saints!"
Arms clasped around his legs, knees pressed against his chin, Mr. Sloane trembled and shook until Jarvis, more agile than the angels of whom his employer had spoken, gave him the dose of bromides.