“Oh, all right.” Burnham moved to the desk and picked up a pencil sharpener from among the brass ornaments lying about. “Hurry, Evelyn, and send Jones to my room with my clothes.”
But Evelyn did not start at once on her errand; there was a feverish anxiety about Burnham which puzzled her. His explanation of his presence in the room was plausible; it was a natural impulse to look in the library if he heard any one moving about in the room closed by order of the coroner, and perfectly proper to lock the door to prevent others entering. But why had he not looked into the hall on first entering the library to see who had left the room? Why wait nearly five minutes, for that time at least had elapsed while she, Evelyn, had engaged the housekeeper in conversation, before jerking open the door? And why select the moment when she and not Mrs. Ward was standing before it? Come to think of it, she had rattled the knob in trying to open the door; of course, that would attract Burnham’s attention and cause him to find out who was trying to enter. Satisfied with the sudden solution which had occurred to her, Evelyn woke up to the fact that Burnham was thumping nervously on the door which he held invitingly open.
“Hurry, hurry,” he reiterated, and Evelyn sped out of the room.
Burnham waited a moment after closing the hall door and locking it securely, then taking out his bunch of keys he slipped the key on its silver ring and dropped them back in his pocket. Next he hurried over to the desk and gathered some papers from the drawer, closed it, picked up the scrap-basket and placed it under the desk, and taking a pocket chess board from the table he returned to his bedroom through the communicating door, closing it carefully behind him. After pulling up the shades and pushing back the curtains and flooding the room with light, he clambered back into bed and commenced reading over the papers he still clutched in his hand. He was absorbed in working out a difficult chess problem on the pocket board when a rap on his hall door disturbed him.
“Come in, Jones,” he called, but instead of his butler, Dr. Hayden walked in. Burnham’s worried expression changed to one of relief. “I thought you would never come,” he exclaimed, pushing aside the chess diagrams lying on the counterpane. “Draw up a chair and let’s talk; don’t bother about that thermometer,” frowning. “My temperature is normal, I’ve taken it,” pointing to a silver encased instrument lying on the bed stand.
Hayden smiled as he sat down, having first, however, poured out a glass of water from a carafe on the stand and put his thermometer in the glass of water.
“Amateur diagnosticians make work for the physicians,” he said good naturedly. “What are your symptoms to-day, Burnham?”
But Burnham did not smile. “I know what ails me,” he retorted doggedly, his eyes shifting about the room and then back at Hayden. “Worry has played the devil with my digestive organs. I’ll admit I had a beastly night, but I am all right now. I don’t like the baby’s food my wife insists on sending up to me, gruel and such stuff. I want a square meal.”
“We’ll see.” Hayden laid his fingers on Burnham’s wrist. “Pulse all right,” he said cheerily. “Stop worrying, Burnham, and give your nervous system a rest. I have told you before that you work yourself into these excitements.”
“Work myself up!” exclaimed Burnham bitterly. “Nothing of the sort. Do you think a man of my temperament can keep calm after finding a dead man in one of my rooms and being shot at two nights ago—and the murderer still at large? Why, man, my life’s in danger any hour, any moment until René La Montagne is put under restraint.”