The entire building consisted of two rooms—a private consulting-room, and the office proper, which opened out upon the long, straight village street, with its sleepy-looking stores and the great, bare, unpainted hotel, which seemed perennially empty.
At sound of that unexpected summons, Doctor Lynne started in surprise. For five long years he had occupied that office, whose weather-beaten shingle told the passers-by that Frederick Lynne, M. D., might be found within; but never before within memory had he been summoned upon a night like this. Sickness was at a discount in healthy Chester, where people usually died of old age. But as he stood there, staring vacantly about him, trying to persuade himself that it had been only a freak of the imagination, once more that ghostly tapping sounded upon the stout oaken panels of the office door.
"It is some one!" ejaculated the astonished physician, going swiftly to the door and unbolting it.
"You'd better be all night about it," growled a voice from the door-step; and Lynne saw before him a tall man wrapped in a long dark cloak, the high collar turned up about his ears, a broad-brimmed sombrero pulled down over his brows so that no feature of the face was visible save a pair of flashing dark eyes and a prominent nose.
"Doctor Lynne, I presume?" queried the stranger.
The physician bowed.
"I am Doctor Lynne, sir," he returned, simply. "Are my services required?"
"Yes. Wait a moment."
The physician stood there in the open door, through which the wind swept madly, nearly extinguishing the dim light of the little oil lamp upon the reading-table, his astonished eyes fixed upon an unwonted spectacle. A closed carriage which stood without, its driver, enveloped in an oil-skin coat, sitting like a statue upon the box. The stranger walked swiftly to the carriage door and opened it. A pause ensued, during which Doctor Lynne began to feel strangely uncomfortable; then, to his relief, the stranger reappeared at the office door, bearing in his arms the slight figure of a woman.
"Have you any brandy or other stimulant?" he asked, as he placed the limp, unresisting figure upon the old-fashioned sofa which stood in a corner.