Page:The City of Masks (1918).djvu/160

148 plete, that his august customers could not fail to notice it. Something was wrong with the poor man! Certainly he was not himself. He looked ill,—at any rate, he did not look as well as usual. Heart, that's what it was, flashed through Mrs. Millidew's brain. Mrs. Smith-Parvis took it to be vertigo. Sometimes her husband looked like that when—

"Will you please excuse me, ladies,—just for a moment or two?" he mumbled, in a most extraordinary voice. "I will go at once and write a note to Mr. Juneo. Make yourselves at 'ome. And—and—" He shot an appealing glance at Miss Emsdale,—"and you too, Miss."

In a very few minutes a stenographer came out of the office into which Mr. Moody had disappeared, with a typewritten letter to Mr. Juneo, and the word that Mr. Moody had been taken suddenly ill and begged to be excused. He hoped that they would be so gracious as to allow Mr. Paddock to show them everything they had in stock,—and so on.

"It was so sudden," said Mrs. Millidew. "I never saw such a change in a man in all my life. Heart, of course. High living, you may be sure. It gets them every time."

"I shall run in tomorrow and tell him about Dr. Brodax," said Mrs. Smith-Parvis firmly. "He ought to see the best man in the city, of course, and no one—"

"For the Lord's sake, don't let him get into the clutches of that man Brodax," interrupted Mrs. Millidew. "He is—"

"No, thank you, Mr. Paddock,—I sha'n't wait.