I put the question to a female who advanced towards me as I crossed the threshold. Apparently the establishment had not attained to the dignity of a hall porter.
'The Honourable Douglas Howarth?' I admitted that I was known by that name. 'His lordship expected to see you before, sir?'
The woman's tone conveyed a reproach which I resented. Evidently to her the Marquis of Twickenham was a person in authority before whom all men should bow. Besides, I could hardly have come more quickly than I had done. As I was being conducted to his apartment I told myself that I would address his lordship in a fashion for which he probably was unprepared.
The surprise, however, was on my side. I had expected to find the man alone. No one had breathed so much as a hint that any one was with him. When I entered the room, however, I found a person bending over the bed, whom it did not require much discernment to infer was a doctor. A voice, which I did not recognise as Mr. Montagu Babbacombe's, issued from beneath the sheets.
'Who's that?--Who's that come in?'
The waiter announced my name and style, as if introducing me to an assembled company.
'The Honourable Douglas Howarth.'
'Doug--! Is that you, Doug? D----n you! I thought you'd come!'
I advanced towards the bed. The doctor bowed. He was a young man, probably not much over thirty, with a frank, open face, which suggested rather a pleasant disposition than commanding talents. In the bed was Babbacombe--or Twickenham--whichever he chose to call himself. But what a change had taken place in his appearance since yesterday! So complete was the alteration that I was half inclined to suspect that a trick was being played on me, rather than on the rest of the world.
If this was not a sick man then surely I had never seen one. On his face there was the--I was about to write--unmistakable look of the being from whom the sands of life are slipping fast. This was a complete wreck; the husk of a man; a creature for whom, so far as this life was concerned, all things were at an end. The cheeks were hollow; the eyes dim; the jaw had an uncomfortable trick of gaping open, as if the mechanism which controlled it was a little out of order. One arm was out of bed. The hand was attenuated, so as to seem nothing but skin and bone. It had that clammy look, which one would suppose incapable of imitation, which suggests physical decay. If this man was not in the last stage of a mortal illness, then he was a master of arts which are not accounted holy. Entirely without intention I stood before him, oppressed by a feeling of half reverence, half awe, of which, I take it, most of us are conscious when we find ourselves in the presence of the coming king.