“Know ’er, sir?” asked the waterman.
“A little!” he replied. “Her husband is a reporter—a drinking scamp.”
Carter shut off the light of the bull’s-eye, at that moment.
“We’re jes’ ’ere now, sur, so’s best not to be callin’ ’tention like wi’ a light.”
He steered the boat into a kind of narrow alley-way between two crazy old wharves.
Hammond, rightly gauging the kindly heart of his landlady, had brought the drenched woman in a cab to his lodgings. She was still in a half-fainting condition when he carried her into the house. In two sentences he explained the situation to the landlady, whose natural kindness and loyalty to her lodger made her willing to aid his purpose of rescue.
“I will carry her up to the bath-room,” he said. “Let your girl get a cup of milk heated as hot as can be sipped, while you bath this poor soul quickly in very hot water. Then let her be got to bed, and have some good, nourishing soup ready. She’ll probably sleep after that. And in the morning—well, the events of the morning will take their own shape.”
Half-an-hour later, as Hammond took a cup of coffee, he had the satisfaction of knowing that the woman he had saved was in bed, and doing well.
“Poor soul!” he mused. “That brute of a husband has probably driven her to this attempt on her life. I wonder what her history was before she married, for I remember how it struck me, that day when I saw her at the office, that she was evidently a woman of some culture.”