Page:The Death-Doctor.djvu/66

54 Two days after I arrived at Mallowfield a great disaster happened. Sir Geoffrey became suddenly ill at dinner, and the fussy little family medico diagnosed that he had been attacked by an apoplectic seizure. Consequently, Francis was wired for next morning, and arrived about six o'clock on the same evening.

I was in the hall when he arrived, and saw his step-mother—a sly, dark, beautifully-formed woman who did not look her forty-five years—meet the young lieutenant at the door of his home.

He shook hands with her and immediately inquired after his father.

"He had a stroke last night," she answered, "and Dr. Shaw-Lathome fears that he will not recover. Poor Frank, I am so bitterly grieved." And her handkerchief went up to her eyes.

"May I go up and see him?" asked Francis in a cold, unemotional voice. I found out later that the presence of his stepmotherstep-mother [sic] always made him show the worst side of his character.

"Certainly, if you wish," she replied. "We have got a nurse—a very good one."

He went upstairs, and the nurse admitted him to have, as it turned out, his last look at his unconscious father.

Meanwhile—you understand, of course, that