Part 6 (1/2)
”All right. I shall be there almost as soon as he is.”
She seemed to have no alternative, just as Beaumaroy had none. Yet while she put on her mackintosh, it was very wet and misty, got out her car, and lit her lamps, her face was still fretful and her mind disturbed. For now, as she looked back on it, Beaumaroy's conversation with her at Old Place seemed just a prelude to this summons, and meant to prepare her for it. Perhaps that too was pardonable diplomacy, and no reference to it could be expected in a letter which she was at liberty to show to Dr.
Irechester. She wondered, uncomfortably, how Irechester would take it.
CHAPTER V
A FAMILIAR IMPLEMENT
As Mary brought her car to a stand at the gate of the little front garden of Tower Cottage, she saw, through the mist, Beaumaroy's corrugated face; he was standing in the doorway, and the light in the pa.s.sage revealed it.
It seemed to her to wear a triumphant impish look, but this vanished as he advanced to meet her, relieved her of the neat black handbag which she always carried with her on her visits, and suggested gravely that she should at once go upstairs and see her patient.
”He's quieter now,” he said. ”The mere news that you were coming had a soothing effect. Let me show you the way.” He led her upstairs and into a small room on the first floor, nakedly furnished with necessities, but with a cheery fire blazing in the grate.
Old Mr. Saffron lay in bed, propped up by pillows. His silver hair strayed from under a nightcap; he wore a light blue bedroom jacket; its color matched that of his restless eyes; his arms were under the clothes from the elbows down. He was rather flushed, but did not look seriously ill, and greeted Doctor Mary with dignified composure.
”I'll see Dr. Arkroyd alone, Hector.” Beaumaroy gave the slightest little jerk of his head, and the old man added quickly, ”I am sure of myself, quite sure.”
The phrase sounded rather an odd one to Mary, but Beaumaroy accepted the a.s.surance with a nod: ”All right, I'll wait downstairs, sir. I hope you'll bring me a good account of him, Doctor.” So he left Mary to make her examination; going downstairs, he shook his head once, pursed up his lips, and then smiled doubtfully, as a man may do when he has made up his mind to take a chance.
When Mary rejoined him, she asked for pen and paper, wrote a prescription, and requested that Beaumaroy's man should take it to the chemist's. He went out, to give it to the Sergeant, and, when he came back, found her seated in the big chair by the fire.
”The present little attack is nothing, Mr. Beaumaroy,” she said.
”Stomachic--with a little fever; if he takes what I've prescribed, he ought to be all right in the morning. But I suppose you know that there is valvular disease--quite definite? Didn't Dr. Irechester tell you?”
”Yes; but he said there was no particular--no immediate danger.”
”If he's kept quiet and free from worry. Didn't he advise that?”
”Yes,” Beaumaroy admitted, ”he did. That's the only thing you find wrong with him, Doctor?”
Beaumaroy was standing on the far side of the table, his finger-tips resting lightly on it. He looked across at Mary with eyes candidly inquiring.
”I've found nothing else so far. I suppose he's got nothing to worry him?”
”Not really, I think. He fusses a bit about his affairs.” He smiled. ”We go to London every week to fuss about his affairs; he's always changing his investments, taking his money out of one thing and putting it in another, you know. Old people get like that sometimes, don't they? I'm a novice at that kind of thing, never having had any money to play with; but I'm bound to say that he seems to know very well what he's about.”
”Do you know anything of his history or his people? Has he any relations?”
”I know very little. I don't think he has any, any real relations, so to speak. There are, I believe, some cousins, distant cousins, whom he hates. In fact, a lonely old bachelor, Dr. Arkroyd.”
Mary gave a little laugh and became less professional. ”He's rather an old dear! He uses funny stately phrases. He said I might speak quite openly to you, as you were closely attached to his person!”
”Sounds rather like a newspaper, doesn't it? He does talk like that sometimes.” Beaumaroy moved round the table, came close to the fire, and stood there, smiling down at Mary.
”He's very fond of you, I think,” she went on.
”He reposes entire confidence in me,” said Beaumaroy, with a touch of a.s.sumed pompousness.
”Those were his very words!” cried Mary, laughing again. ”And he said it just in that way! How clever of you to guess!”