Page:HG Wells--secret places of the heart.djvu/279

Rh hastily for Dr. Martineau and without waiting for his arrival took a hot bath and got into bed. He was already thoroughly ill when the doctor arrived.

“Forgive my sending for you,” he said. “Not your line. I know.... My wife’s G.P.—an exasperating sort of ass. Can’t stand him. No one else.”

He was lying on a narrow little bed with a hard pillow that the doctor replaced by one from Lady Hardy’s room. He had twisted the bed-clothes into a hopeless muddle, the sheet was on the floor.

Sir Richmond’s bedroom was a large apartment in which sleep seemed to have been an admitted necessity rather than a principal purpose. On one hand it opened into a business-like dressing and bath room, on the other into the day study. It bore witness to the nocturnal habits of a man who had long lived a life of irregular impulses to activity and dislocated hours and habits. There was a desk and reading lamp for night work near the fireplace, an electric kettle for making tea at night, a silver biscuit tin; all the apparatus for the lonely intent industry of the small hours. There was a bookcase of bluebooks, books of reference and suchlike material, and some files. Over the mantelpiece was an enlarged photograph of Lady Hardy and a plain office calendar. The desk was littered with the galley proofs of the Minority Report upon which Sir Richmond had been work-