He had started to say murder ... but he hung up instead....
The night operator snapped to the exchange:
“Now keep on ringing and let me know when you get Riverside 7892, Dr. Henry MacArthur.”
“Say, what’s the trouble. Can’t you wait....”
“Listen, Pal,” the night operator responded. “You know as much as I do. A woman ‘went out’ and the whole place is raisin’ hell....”
“Aw girlie, quit y’kiddin’. What did they expect her to do? That’s a hospital, ain’t it?”
In what the architects refer to as “The Master’s chamber” of a white colonial house replete with early American antiques—mostly genuine pieces inherited from his wife’s mother—Dr. Henry MacArthur snored peacefully. His wife was in Paris and he had spent from ten to midnight propped up in bed, smoking cigarettes and sipping whiskey highballs. The enjoyment of sprees is based upon comparison.
He lay with one arm against his head, the other thrown out, from habit, toward his wife’s side. He snored with vehemence; he had had a grand time....
Upon a bedside table lay a volume of Osler’s essays and several medical journals. They were dusty. Only the telephone appeared to have been used within the last week.
The telephone was as necessary to Dr. MacArthur’s existence as his eye-glasses. To be so excellent a director of so tremendous a hospital demanded that at any moment of any hour he must be immediately available and ready with a wise, sane, judicial decision upon any subject under the sun. Therefore wherever he went, whenever he went, whyever he went could be known by any head nurse who cared to inquire. That was why he had enjoyed his spree.