We proceeded in this funereal manner up the stairs to the first floor on the landing of which my conductress halted and for the first time broke the silence.
“You will probably find Mr. Bendelow asleep or dozing,” she said in a rather gruff voice. “If he is, there is no need for you to disturb him.”
“Mr. Bendelow!” I exclaimed. “I understood that his name was Morris.”
“Well, it isn’t,” she retorted. “It is Bendelow. My name is Morris and so is my husband’s. It was he who wrote to you.”
“By the way,” said I, “how did he know my name? I am acting for Dr. Cornish, you know.”
“I didn’t know,” said she, “and I don’t suppose he did. Probably the servant told him. But it doesn’t matter. Here you are, and you will do as well as another. I was telling you about Mr. Bendelow. He is in a pretty bad way. The specialist whom Mr. Morris took him to—Dr. Artemus Cropper—said he had cancer of the bi-lorus, whatever that is⸺”
“Pylorus,” I corrected.
“Well, pylorus, then, if you prefer it,” she said impatiently. “At any rate, whatever it is, he’s got cancer of it; and, as I said before, he is in a pretty bad way. Dr. Cropper told us what to do, and we are doing it. He wrote out full directions as to diet—I will show them to you presently—and he said that Mr. Bendelow was to have a dose of morphia if he complained of pain—which he does, of course; and that, as there was no chance of his getting better, it didn’t matter how much morphia he had. The great thing was to keep him out of pain. So we give it to him twice a day—at least, my husband does—and that keeps him fairly comfortable. In fact, he sleeps most of the time, and is probably dozing now; so you are not likely to get much out of him, especially as he is rather hard of hearing even when he is awake. And now you had better come in and have a look at him.”
She advanced to the door of a room and opened it softly, and I followed in a somewhat uncomfortable frame of mind. It seemed to me that I had no function but that of a mere figure-head. Dr. Cropper, whom I knew by name as a physician of some reputation, had made the diagnosis and prescribed the treatment, neither of which I, as a mere beginner, would think of contesting. It was an unsatisfactory, even an ignominious, position from which my professional pride revolted. But apparently it had to be accepted.
Mr. Bendelow was a most remarkable-looking man. Probably he had always been somewhat peculiar in appearance; but now the frightful emaciation (which strongly confirmed Cropper’s diagnosis) had so accentuated his original peculiarities that he had the appearance of some dreadful, mirthless caricature. Under the influence of the remorseless disease, every structure which was capable of shrinking had shrunk to the vanishing-point, leaving the unshrinkable skeleton jutting out with a most horrible and grotesque effect. His great hooked nose, which must always have been strikingly prominent, stuck out now, thin and sharp, like the beak of some bird of prey. His heavy, beetling brows, which must always have given to his face a frowning sullenness, now overhung sockets which had shrunk away into mere caverns. His naturally high cheek-bones were now not only prominent, but exhibited the details of their structure as one sees them in a dry skull. Altogether, his aspect was at once pitiable and forbidding. Of his age I could form no estimate. He might have been a hundred. The wonder was that he was still alive; that there was yet left in that shrivelled body enough material to enable its mechanism to continue its functions.