“I’ll do better than that. If needed, Dave, I’ll be—here!”
“Very good. Show him in.”
Shannon straightened up, smoothed his bottle-green jacket with his palms, and stalked with stilty stiffness through the opposite door, closing it after him.
Doctor Devoll reverted to the card.
“Written with a pen,” he repeated, his eyes squinted and gleaming. “But not on one of our office blanks. Most men have a printed card or engraved. Written with a pen. One might rightly infer from that, perhaps, that his name is not—Blaisdell.”
Obviously, Doctor Devoll was more than ordinarily discerning.
Shannon had, in the meantime, returned to the man waiting in the hospital office. He then had all the earmarks of a well-trained butler, thoroughly conscious of his dignified functions.
“Pardon the delay, sir,” he said sedately. “Doctor Devoll was talking by telephone with a patient. He will see you. This way, sir.”
Nick followed him through the main corridor, then into a narrow diverging passageway, then down three steps and through a second narrow entry, at the end of which was the door of the physician’s private room. Shannon knocked and then opened it.
“Mr. Blaisdell, sir,” he announced.