He looked at the thermometer, murmured something about liquid diet, avoiding my eye—Mrs. Klopton was broiling a chop at the time—and took his departure, humming cheerfully as he went down-stairs. McKnight looked after him wistfully.
“Jove, I wish I had his constitution,” he exclaimed. “Neither nerves nor heart! What a chauffeur he would make!”
But I was serious.
“I have an idea,” I said grimly, “that this small matter of the murder is going to come up again, and that your uncle will be in the deuce of a fix if it does. If that woman is going to die, somebody ought to be around to take her deposition. She knows a lot, if she didn’t do it herself. I wish you would go down to the telephone and get the hospital. Find out her name, and if she is conscious.”
McKnight went under protest. “I haven’t much time,” he said, looking at his watch. “I’m to meet Mrs. West and Alison at one. I want you to know them, Lollie. You would like the mother.”
“Why not the daughter?” I inquired. I touched the little gold bag under the pillow.
“Well,” he said judicially, “you’ve always declared against the immaturity and romantic nonsense of very young women—”
“I never said anything of the sort,” I retorted furiously.
“‘There is more satisfaction to be had out of a good saddle horse!’” he quoted me. “‘More excitement out of a polo pony, and as for the eternal matrimonial chase, give me instead a good stubble, a fox, some decent hounds and a hunter, and I’ll show you the real joys of the chase!’”
“For Heaven’s sake, go down to the telephone, you make my head ache,” I said savagely.