"Death? In what form?"
"Slow, sure fingers, shutting off his breath. Do you need further
details or will the dry, scientific term, epithelioma, be enough?" The
voice came grim out of the gloom. No answer being returned, it
continued: "I've had easier jobs than telling Ned Worth. It was hopeless
from the first. My old friend, Death, had too long a start on me."
"Was it something that affected his mind?"
"No. His mind was perfectly clear. Vividly clear. May I take my last
verdict, when it comes, with a spirit as clear and as noble."
Silence fell, and in the stillness we heard the Little Red Doctor
communing with memories. Now and then came a muttered word. "Suicide!"
in a snarl of scornful rejection. "Fool-made definitions!" Presently,
"Story for a romancer, not a physician." He seemed to be canvassing an
inadequacy in himself with dissatisfaction. Then, more clearly: "Love
from the first. At a glance, perhaps. The contagion of flame for powder.
But in that abyss together they saw each other's soul."
"The Little Red Doctor is turning poet," said Sheldon to me in an
incredulous whisper.
There was the snap and crackle of a match from the shadowed corner. The
keen, gnarled young face sprang from the darkness, vivid and softened
with a strange triumph, then receded behind an imperfect circle, clouded
the next instant by a nimbus of smoke. The Little Red Doctor spoke.
Ned Worth was my friend as well as my patient. No need to tell you men,
who knew him, why I was fond of him. I don't suppose any one ever came
in contact with that fantastic and smiling humanity of his without
loving him for it. "Immortal hilarity!" The phrase might have been
coined for him.
It wasn't as physician that I went home with Ned, after pronouncing
sentence upon him, but as friend. I didn't want him to be alone that
first night. Yet I dare say that any one, seeing the two of us, would
have thought me the one who had heard his life-limit defined. He was as
steady as a rock.
"No danger of my being a miser of life," he said. "You've given me leave
to spend freely what's left of it." Well, he spent. Freely and
splendidly!
The spacious old library on the second floor--you know it, Dominie,
smelt of disuse, as we entered, Ned's servant bringing up the rear with
a handbag. Dust had settled down like an army of occupation over
everything. The furniture was shrouded in denim. The tall clock in the
corner stood voiceless. Three months of desertion will change any house
into a tomb. And the Worth mansion was never too cheerful, anyway. Since
the others of the family died, Ned hadn't stayed there long enough at a
time to humanize it.
Ned's man set down the grip, unstrapped it, took his orders for some
late purchases, and left to execute them. I went over to open the two
deep-set windows on the farther side of the room. It was a still, close
October night, and the late scent of warmed-over earth came up to me out
of Ely Crouch's garden next door. From where I stood in the broad
embrasure of the south window, I was concealed from the room. But I
could see everything through a tiny gap in the hangings. Ned sat at his
desk sorting some papers. A sort of stern intentness had settled upon
his face, without marring its curious faun-like beauty. I carry the
picture in my mind.
"What's become of you, Chris?" he demanded presently. I came out into
the main part of the room. "Oh, there you are! You'll look after a few
little matters for me, won't you?" He indicated a sheaf of papers.
"You needn't be in such a hurry," said I with illogical resentment. "It
isn't going to be to-morrow or next week."
"Isn't it?" Something in his tone made me look at him sharply. "Six
months or three months or to-morrow," he added, more lightly; "what does
it matter as long as it's sure! You know, what I appreciate is that you
gave me the truth straight."
"It's a luxury few of my patients get. Their constitutions won't stand
it."
"It's a compliment to my nerve. Strangely enough I don't feel nervous
about it."
"I do. Damnably! About something, anyway. There's something wrong with
this room, Ned. What is it?"
"Don't you know?" he laughed. "It's the sepulchral silence of Old
Grandfather Clock, over there. You're looking right at him and wondering
subconsciously why he doesn't make a noise like Time."
"That's easily remedied." Consulting my watch I set and wound the
ancient timepiece. Its comfortable iteration made the place at once more
livable. Immediately it struck the hour.
"Ten o'clock," I said, and parted the draperies at the lower window to
look out again. "Ten o'clock of a still, cloudy night and--and the devil
is on a prowl in his garden."
"Meaning my highly respected neighbor and ornament to the local bar, the
Honorable Ely Crouch?"
"Exactly. Preceded by a familiar spirit in animal form."
"Oh, that's his pet ferret and boon companion."
"Not his only companion. There's some one with him," I said. "A woman."
"I don't admire her taste in romance," said Ned.
"Nor her discretion. You know what they say: 'A dollar or a woman never
safe alone with Ely Crouch.'"
"My dollars certainly weren't," observed Ned.
"How did he ever defend your suit for an accounting?" I asked.
"Heedlessness on my side, a crooked judge on his. Stop spying on my
neighbor's flirtations and look here."
I turned and got a shock. The handbag lay open on the desk, surrounded
by a respectable-sized fortune in bank-notes.
"Pretty much all that the Honorable Ely has left me," he added.
"Is it enough to go on with, Ned?" I asked.