Even the horse-cars and omnibuses were scantily patronized, while the poor drivers, muffled to their eyebrows in fur coats and comforters, seemed like dark, grim specters, devoid of life and motion, save for the breath that issued from their mouths and nostrils, and, congealing, formed in frozen globules among their beards.
At ten o’clock on this bitter night, Thomas Turner, M. D., was arranging his office preparatory to retiring, and feeling profoundly thankful that he had no patients who demanded his attention, and believing, too, that no one would venture forth to call him, when, to his annoyance and dismay, his bell suddenly rang a clanging and imperative peal.
With a shiver of dread at the thought of having to leave the warmth and comfort of his home, to face the fearful cold, yet with a premonition that the summons would result in something out of the ordinary course of events, he laid down the case of instruments that he had been carefully arranging, and went to answer the call.
He found a lad of perhaps fifteen years standing outside the door.
Without a word he thrust a card into the physician’s hand.
“Come in, boy! come in,” said the doctor, pitying the poor fellow, whose teeth were chattering at such a rate it was doubtful whether he could have spoken if he wished.
He obeyed the invitation with alacrity, however, and made directly for the radiator, toward which Dr. Turner pointed, telling him to “go and warm himself.”
The physician then stepped beneath the hall light to examine the card he had received.
It proved to be the business card of a first-class, though small, hotel in the city, and on the blank side of it there had been hastily written these words:
“Come at once to the —— House. An urgent case demands your immediate attention.