He was not surprised when the door opened on the old scene—the small, stuffy room, smelling of drugs; the lamp on the table; the doctor, in a flowered dressing-gown and slippers, reading a novel. It had been Gerry’s favorite den since his wife’s death years before, and it was the one place in which he seemed to fit exactly.
As Overton entered, he looked up over his spectacles, took in the big, gaunt lines of his visitor’s figure, and held out a cordial hand. The greeting had in it a moment of intimate feeling. The old man quickly detected the ravages in Overton’s face, and his eyes filled with tears, of which he was immediately ashamed. He bustled about and thrust forward a chair to hide his own emotion.
“Sit down, my boy,” he said bruskly. “Have a cigar? Now tell me all about it. Had a close shave, I know. I was told so a long while ago.”
Overton started with surprise.
“What do you mean?”
“Faunce told me. There’s no use making a secret of it to you, I reckon.”
His visitor gazed at him blankly.
“What possessed him to do that?”
“Conscience, maybe. Personally I should call it nerves. He couldn’t sleep, and he got to the point where he had to speak; he was too pent-up to endure it any longer. It’s the kind of thing doctors and ministers run against occasionally—a sort of almost hysterical desire to get it all out, to make a clean breast of it, and to lighten the load in that way. It’s about on a par with sending conscience-money to the Treasury.”
Overton slowly lit his cigar.