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Page 28
His visitor shrank away, with a protesting hand upraised.
"You forget that I am a Mussulman, and a true follower of the
Prophet," said he. "But tell me what is the bottle of green glass
which you have placed in your pocket?"
"It is chloroform."
"Ah, that also is forbidden to us. It is a spirit, and we make
no use of such things."
"What! You would allow your wife to go through an operation
without an anaesthetic?"
"Ah! she will feel nothing, poor soul. The deep sleep has
already come on, which is the first working of the poison. And
then I have given her of our Smyrna opium. Come, sir, for already
an hour has passed."
As they stepped out into the darkness, a sheet of rain was
driven in upon their faces, and the hall lamp, which dangled from
the arm of a marble Caryatid, went out with a fluff. Pim, the
butler, pushed the heavy door to, straining hard with his shoulder
against the wind, while the two men groped their way towards the
yellow glare which showed where the cab was waiting. An instant
later they were rattling upon their journey.
"Is it far?" asked Douglas Stone.
"Oh, no. We have a very little quiet place off the Euston
Road."
The surgeon pressed the spring of his repeater and listened to
the little tings which told him the hour. It was a quarter past
nine. He calculated the distances, and the short time which it
would take him to perform so trivial an operation. He ought to
reach Lady Sannox by ten o'clock. Through the fogged windows he
saw the blurred gas lamps dancing past, with occasionally the
broader glare of a shop front. The rain was pelting and rattling
upon the leathern top of the carriage, and the wheels swashed as
they rolled through puddle and mud. Opposite to him the white
headgear of his companion gleamed faintly through the obscurity.
The surgeon felt in his pockets and arranged his needles, his
ligatures and his safety-pins, that no time might be wasted when
they arrived. He chafed with impatience and drummed his foot upon
the floor.
But the cab slowed down at last and pulled up. In an instant
Douglas Stone was out, and the Smyrna merchant's toe was at his
very heel.
"You can wait," said he to the driver.
It was a mean-looking house in a narrow and sordid street. The
surgeon, who knew his London well, cast a swift glance into the
shadows, but there was nothing distinctive--no shop, no movement,
nothing but a double line of dull, flat-faced houses, a double
stretch of wet flagstones which gleamed in the lamplight, and a
double rush of water in the gutters which swirled and gurgled
towards the sewer gratings. The door which faced them was blotched
and discoloured, and a faint light in the fan pane above, it served
to show the dust and the grime which covered it. Above in one of
the bedroom windows, there was a dull yellow glimmer. The merchant
knocked loudly, and, as he turned his dark face towards the light,
Douglas Stone could see that it was contracted with anxiety. A
bolt was drawn, and an elderly woman with a taper stood in the
doorway, shielding the thin flame with her gnarled hand.
"Is all well?" gasped the merchant.
"She is as you left her, sir."
"She has not spoken?"
"No, she is in a deep sleep."
The merchant closed the door, and Douglas Stone walked down the
narrow passage, glancing about him in some surprise as he did so.
There was no oil-cloth, no mat, no hat-rack. Deep grey dust and
heavy festoons of cobwebs met his eyes everywhere. Following
the old woman up the winding stair, his firm footfall echoed
harshly through the silent house. There was no carpet.
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