Page:Sorrell and Son - Deeping - 1926.djvu/381

 "Mr. Sorrell is not here, sir."

"O, but I had a wire."

"He is at the hospital."

"Then he can't be"

"In a private ward, sir."

She saw the rimmed whiteness of Sorrell's eyes. For the moment he was unable to speak.

"At St Martha's?"

"Yes, sir."

She was astonished by his sudden fierceness.

"What is it,—what's all the fuss about?"

"Mr. Sorrell cut himself at an operation, sir. I don't understand—quite. Only two or three days ago"

She stood watching his vanishing back, for he had turned and walked out of the house with that same strange suggestion of rage, lips pale, nose sharp and pinched, eyes brittle. She had seen fear before, but not that sort of fear, and she did not recognize it. She realized that he had one off, lugging the suitcase along with him.

"Poor gentleman. One of the worrying sort."

As though a man was not justified in worrying when the labour of half a lifetime was in danger of slipping into the sea! For Sorrell had begun to feel so secure; he had founded his edifice so carefully, and watched it grow while he himself had grown old in contemplating its completion. So Kit had cut himself at an operation? A mere nick of the knife. But what—exactly—did it mean? Why all this panic, and a private ward, and the queer look in that woman's eyes? The mere nick of a knife! But Orange had wired

At the hospital the porter said to him with that bland, English gentleness—"Hadn't you better leave that suitcase with me, sir!"

Suitcase! He had been quite unconscious of the fact that his concentrated grip had made the thing a part of himself,—and let the porter take it from him.

"Yes,—I suppose so. Mr. Orange wired to me"

"I know all about it, sir."

"My son"

"Yes, sir. Mr. Orange left instructions; he is upstairs, sir. If you will come with me."

From the warmth of a corridor they passed into the