"You have an appointment, sir?" Her manner seemed to imply that her dignity would suffer if this were not the case.
Satisfied by his answer, she ushered him into a room where a gas fire burned feebly with an apologetic air, as though painfully conscious of its meretricious logs. Half a dozen people, muffled in coats and furs, were scattered about a long dining table, occupied in reading listlessly the papers, to avoid the temptation of staring at each other. The place smelt of biscuits, of fog and of gas, like an unaired buffet in a railway station.
McTaggart, weighed down by a sense of impending doom, picked up a "Punch" and retired to the window, ostensibly to amuse himself, in reality to rehearse for the hundredth time his slender stock of "symptoms." The clock ticked on, and a bleak silence reigned, broken at intervals by the sniff of a small boy, who, accompanied by a parent and a heavy cold in the head, was feasting his soul on a volume of the "Graphic."
Something familiar in the cartoon under his eyes drew McTaggart away from his own dreary thoughts.
"I mustn't forget to tell him..." he was saying to himself, when he realized that the paper he held was dated five months back! He felt immediately quite unreasonably annoyed. A sudden desire to rise up and go invaded his mind. In his nervous state the excuse seemed amply sufficient. A "Punch" five months old! ... it was a covert insult.
A doctor who could trade on his patient's credulity—pocketing his three guineas, don't forget that!—and offer them literature but fit to light the fire...
A "Punch" Five Months Old! ... he gathered up his gloves.
But a noiseless step crossed the room, a voice whispered his name.
"Mr. McTaggart? This way, please."
He found himself following the bony parlour maid, past the aggressive eyes of the still-waiting crowd, out into the hall and down a glass-roofed passage.