Brownlow, though he managed to conceal his feelings, was disturbed by the manner of his chief and by the telephone message to the doctor; by the whole affair, in fact, for Simon never left the office till the stroke of one, when the brougham called to take him to Simpson's in the Strand for luncheon.
Was Simon ill? He ventured to put the question and nearly had his head snapped off.
Ill! No, of course he wasn't ill, never better in his life; what on earth put that idea into Brownlow's head?
Then the testy one departed in search of the taxi, and Brownlow returned to his room and his duties.
CHAPTER III DR. OPPENSHAW
Just as rabbit-burrows on the Arizona plain give shelter to a mixed tenantry, a rabbit, an owl, and a snake often occupying the same hole, so the Harley Street houses are, as a rule, divided up between dentists, oculists, surgeons, and physicians, so that under the same roof you can, if you are so minded, have your teeth extracted, your lungs percussed, your eyes put right, and your surgical ailment seen to, each on a different floor. Number 110A, Harley Street, however, contained only one occupant—Dr. Otto Oppenshaw. Dr. Oppenshaw had no need of a sharer in his rent burdens; a neurologist in the most nerve-ridden city of Europe, he was making an income of some twenty-five thousand a year.
People were turned away from his door as from a theatre where a wildly successful play is running. The main craving of fashionable neurotics, a craving beyond, though often inspired by the craving for, the opium alkaloids and cocaine, was to see Oppenshaw. Yet he was not much to see: a little bald man like a turnip, with the manners of a butcher, and gold-rimmed spectacles.
Dukes inspired with the desire to see Oppenshaw had to wait their turn often behind tradesmen, yet he was at Simon Pettigrew's command. Simon was his sometime lawyer. It was half-past twelve, or maybe a bit more, when the taxi drew up at 110A and the lawyer, after a sharp legal discussion over tuppence with the driver, mounted the steps and pressed the bell.