The sharp suspicion faded out of Mrs. Rosval’s eyes as she listened. It was a perfectly credible, perfectly simple explanation. She tossed the crumpled telegram into the fire—which devoured it at a gulp—and began to pull off her gloves. That was her way of intimating that she accepted the situation. Then she rang the bell. The decorous waiter appeared, and she gave the man a quiet order, handing him some loose silver and a slip of paper, upon which she had penciled a few words.
“A cab is waiting at the door. Pay the driver and send him away. A person who is—not quite a gentleman—is waiting in the vestibule. Say to him that Mrs. Rosval is satisfied, and there is no need to wait. Give him that paper at the same moment, or he will not believe you!� As the waiter vanished she turned to the Doctor with the faintest flicker of a smile upon her sensitive pale lips. “I thought it wisest to keep the cab, in case I required to leave this place hurriedly,� said Mrs. Rosval. “The man waiting downstairs is a detective from a well-known Agency. I judged it best to enlist his services—he would have proved useful supposing this business of the telegram to have been a Trap.�
The Doctor spread his large white hands, danglingly, like a seal’s flappers.
“A trap?� he repeated, helplessly. “My dear madam! You suspected that some designing person or persons unknown might—possibly use your husband’s name, invent a story of his illness as a ruse to—entrap you?�
“I suspected,� returned Mrs. Rosval, “no unknown person. The inventor of the ruse would have been my husband. We separated some years ago by mutual consent. At least, I refused to live with him any longer, and he—knowing what grounds I had for the refusal—was obliged to submit. But he resented my action in the matter.� Mrs. Rosval raised her delicate dark eyebrows with weary disdain, and imparted to her shoulders a mute eloquence of contempt which is not the prerogative of an English-bred woman. “And he has, more than once, had recourse to what, for want of a better word, I call Traps. That is all. Matilda,� she addressed the tearful maid, “dry your eyes and tell the people downstairs that I engage this suite of rooms. Two bedrooms, a bathroom, and sitting-room at ten guineas a week, I think they said? Horribly expensive, but it cannot be helped. And now, Doctor�—she turned again to the Doctor—“when do you wish me to see your patient? At once? It shall be at once if you say so! I am completely in your hands!�
The Doctor, a little staggered by the deftness of his patient’s wife in transferring the onus of the situation from her shoulders to his own, absolutely prohibited any suggestion of her entering the sick-room until refreshed and rested. Mrs. Rosval acquiesced, with a repetition of that compromising statement about being completely in his hands—and the Doctor took his leave, promising to return later that evening. She gave him her cool fingers, and they parted. He had no sooner reached the door than she called him back.
“I only wanted to ask—— Of course, you have a library. Does the catalogue of your library include a file of the Daily Telegraph?� It did, the Doctor admitted. File in question extending some twelve years back.
“Three will do,� said Mrs. Rosval, warming one slender arched foot upon the fender. “Next time you are in want of a little light reading, look in the Law Intelligence, Divorce Division, month of February, 1899, where you will find a case: ‘Ffrench v. Ffrench; Rosval cited.’ The details will explain a good deal that may appear puzzling to you with regard to the strained relations between Mr. Rosval and myself. Though doctors never allow themselves to be puzzled, do they? Au revoir!�
II
The Doctor had had an unusually busy day of it. But he curtailed his after-dinner nap in order to glance through the Law Intelligence records of the month of February, 1899. There was much in the case to which Mrs. Rosval had referred that went far toward justifying the “strained relations� she had hinted at. And it is the duty of the medical profession to rally at the war-cry of the outraged Proprieties. But, when alone and unobserved, doctors have many points in common with mere men. And as this Doctor stepped into his brougham he said, “Women are very hard! In all human probability the man was innocent.� He said again, “Women are hard!� as he creaked up the hotel staircase.