I stepped back to the bedside and stood over her.
She did not look worse to me. It might have been only the temporary effect of the strychnine and coffee, but there certainly appeared to be a hint of color in her cheeks.
“I am going downstairs to telephone for a doctor,” I said, taking her hand. Her fingers twined weakly around mine, and clung a little. “Will you lie quietly here until I come back?”
“I don't want a doctor,” she breathed. “I'm much better.”
I paid no attention to this. “And will you promise me never to—not to”—my voice was unsteady—“not to take any more of that dreadful stuff?”
“I could n't,” she replied, in that maddeningly unsatisfactory way of answering serious questions that women appear to have. “There is n't any more.”
I think I compressed my lips over this. But I went right downstairs.
The manager was in his little den behind the hotel office. I beckoned him out, and asked about physicians.
His eyes sought my face. But I told him nothing.
With his assistance—for the telephone service of Peking is not that of New York or Chicago—