I rang for my man. The telegram had been awaiting me about half-an-hour, he said.
Telling him to telephone to the hospital, to say I was on my way, and also to Faulkner, to tell him I couldn’t go to the theatre, I hurried down the stairs, dashed out into the street, and hailed the first taxi I met.
Was the actual truth at last to be revealed?
Chapter Twenty Nine.
A Strange Truth is Told.
I went straight up to the side-ward in the hospital where Thorold lay, the hall-porter, in his glass-box, having nodded me within. At the door of the ward I met the sister, in her blue gown.
“I am so glad you have come, Mr Ashton!” she exclaimed. “He wants so much to see you, and I fear he has not long to live.”
The dark-eyed woman, with the medal on her breast, seemed genuinely distressed. Thorold, for some reason, had always attracted women. I think it was his sympathetic nature that drew women to him.