Page:Harvey O'Higgins--Silent Sam and other stories.djvu/326

314 the doctor. "She 's better now," she said suavely, meeting them in the dining-room. "'T was but a touch of the sun, doctor."

He looked at her. She stood blinking and shifting her small eyes. "What did you do for her?"

She began to stammer: "Wh-what did I do fer her? Why, to be sure, I—I—"

"Take me to her," he ordered.

She gave Beatty a look of hate and despair, and led into the kitchen.

Beatty did not follow. He steadied himself against the old marble mantel of the dining-room, and mopped his face and neck weakly with his handkerchief.

When the doctor reappeared, he ordered: "Call the ambulance. From Bellevue Hospital. Be quick now!"

Beatty edged slowly to the door. He darted through it, and ran upstairs, and locked himself in his room.

"You 'll have to get your breakfast at a restaurant, Mr. Beatty," the boarding-house mistress told him next morning. "My cook has left me."

"What for?" he asked guiltily.

She shrugged her shoulders. "The maid that waits on the table took ill last night. She was delirious—out of her mind—positively violent when the ambulance came for her. The doctor ordered it. I could n't keep her here. How could I? Who's to look after her here? The work has to be done—"

"How is she?" he interrupted.