Part 60 (2/2)
There were several others which to Kennedy seemed more important, but long after we had finished I pondered this answer. Was that her philosophy of life? Undoubtedly she would never have remembered the phrase if it had not been so, at least in a measure.
She had begun to show signs of weariness, and Kennedy quickly brought the conversation around to subjects of apparently a general nature, but skillfully contrived so as to lead the way along lines her answers had indicated.
Kennedy had risen to go, still chatting. Almost unintentionally he picked up from a dressing table a bottle of white tablets, without a label, shaking it to emphasize an entirely, and I believe purposely, irrelevant remark.
”By the way,” he said, breaking off naturally, ”what is that?”
”Only something Dr. Maudsley had prescribed for me,” she answered quickly.
As he replaced the bottle and went on with the thread of the conversation, I saw that in shaking the bottle he had abstracted a couple of the tablets before she realized it. ”I can't tell you just what to do without thinking the case over,” he concluded, rising to go.
”Yours is a peculiar case, Miss Haversham, baffling. I'll have to study it over, perhaps ask Dr. Maudsley If I may see you again. Meanwhile, I am sure what he is doing is the correct thing.”
Inasmuch as she had said nothing about what Dr. Maudsley was doing, I wondered whether there was not just a trace of suspicion in her glance at him from under her long dark lashes.
”I can't see that you have done anything,” she remarked pointedly. ”But then doctors are queer--queer.”
That parting shot also had in it, for me, something to ponder over. In fact I began to wonder if she might not be a great deal more clever than even Kennedy gave her credit for being, whether she might not have submitted to his tests for pure love of pulling the wool over his eyes.
Downstairs again, Kennedy paused only long enough to speak a few words with his friend Dr. Klemm.
”I suppose you have no idea what Dr. Maudsley has prescribed for her?”
he asked carelessly.
”Nothing, as far as I know, except rest and simple food.”
He seemed to hesitate, then he said under his voice, ”I suppose you know that she is a regular dope fiend, seasons her cigarettes with opium, and all that.”
”I guessed as much,” remarked Kennedy, ”but how does she get it here?”
”She doesn't.”
”I see,” remarked Craig, apparently weighing now the man before him. At length he seemed to decide to risk something.
”Klemm,” he said, ”I wish you would do something for me. I see you have the vocaphone here. Now if--say Hazleton--should call--will you listen in on that vocaphone for me?” Dr. Klemm looked squarely at him.
”Kennedy,” he said, ”it's unprofessional, but---”
”So it is to let her be doped up under guise of a cure.”
”What?” he asked, startled. ”She's getting the stuff now?”
”No, I didn't say she was getting opium, or from anyone here. All the same, if you would just keep an ear open---”
”It's unprofessional, but--you'd not ask it without a good reason. I'll try.”
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