Page:Fletcher - The Mortover Grange Affair.pdf/13



The third house from the Hunter Street corner of Brunswick Square was distinguished from its neighbour houses by a red lamp, hanging at its entrance, and beneath this lamp, about half-past seven o'clock of a misty October evening, a woman, breathless and frightened, was frantically knocking at the closed door. Had she looked more closely at her surroundings, she would have seen a small brass plate, fixed on the wall of the house, by which attention was directed to the surgery in a side-passage, and to certain periods of attendance thereat, one of which was just then in being. But the woman was much too agitated to notice anything; either from the haste she had made to the red lamp, or from some recent shock, she was trembling all over and muttering incoherently to herself, and when, in response to her beating on the panels, the door suddenly opened, and a young man in a white jacket appeared on the threshold, she had to make a visible effort before she could gasp out two words: