“Come up,” Julian said, and he hurried back to the flat, the little boy violently emulating his giant stride up the stairs and arriving flushed and panting at the door.  Julian, who was entirely abstracted in his agitation, made for the tentroom without another word to the boy, seized pen and paper and began to write, urgently requesting Dr. Levillier to come at once to see Valentine.  Abruptly a childish voice intruded itself upon him.

“Lor’, sir,” it said.  “Is the gentleman ill?”

Julian glanced up and found that the little boy had innocently followed him into the tentroom, and was now standing near him, gazing with a round-eyed concern upon the stretched figure on the divan.

“Yes,” Julian replied; “ill, very ill.  I want you to go for a doctor.”

The boy approached the divan, moved apparently by the impelling curiosity of tender years.  Julian stopped writing and watched him.  He leaned down and looked at the face, at the inertia of hands and limbs.  As he raised himself up from a calm and close inspection he saw Julian staring at him.  He shook his round bullet head, on which the thick hair grew in an unparted stubble.

“No, I don’t think he’s ill, sir,” he remarked, with treble conviction.

“Then why does he lie like that?”

“I expect it’s because he’s dead, sir,” the child replied, with grave serenity.

This unbiased testimony in favour of his fears came to Julian’s mind like a storm.

“How do you know?” he exclaimed, with a harsh voice.

“Lor’, sir,” the boy said, not without a certain pride, “I knows a corpse when I sees it.  My father died come a fortnight ago.  See that?”

And he indicated, with stumpy finger, the black band upon his left arm.

“Well, father looked just like the gentleman.”

Julian was petrified by this urchin’s intimacy with death.  It struck him as utterly vicious and terrible.  A horror of the rosy-faced little creature, with good-conduct medals gleaming on its breast, came over him.

“Hush!” he said.

“All right, sir; but you take my word for it, the gentleman’s dead.”

Julian finished the note, thrust it into an envelope, and addressed it to the doctor.

“Run and get a cab and take that at once to Harley Street,” he said.

The boy smiled.

“I like cab-riding,” he said.

“And,” Julian caught his arm, “that gentleman is not dead.  He’s alive, I tell you; only in a faint, and alive.”

The boy looked into Julian’s face with the pitying grin of superior knowledge of the world.

“Ah, sir, you didn’t see father,” he said.

Then he turned and bounded eagerly down the stairs, in a hurry for the cab-ride.