“I suppose so,” he said, dully.  “Is it near?  I’ll go myself and get a room.”

“That’s my advice.  I’ll look in later, and if the stupor continues I’ll have in a consultant.”  He picked up his bag and stood looking down at the bed.  “Big fine-looking chap, isn’t he?” he commented.  “Married?”

“No.”

“Well, we’ll get the ambulance, and later on we’ll go over him properly.  I’d call a maid to sit with him, if I were you.”  In the grip of a situation that was too much for him, Bassett rang the bell.  It was answered by the elderly maid who took care of his own bedroom.

Months later, puzzling over the situation, Bassett was to wonder, and not to know, whether chance or design brought the Thorwald woman to the door that night.  At the time, and for weeks, he laid it to tragic chance, the same chance which had placed in Dick’s hand the warning letter that had brought him West.  But as months went on, the part played in the tragedy by that faded woman with her tired dispirited voice and her ash colored hair streaked with gray, assumed other proportions, loomed large and mysterious.

There were times when he wished that some prescience of danger had made him throttle her then and there, so she could not have raised her shrill, alarming voice!  But he had no warning.  All he saw was a woman in a washed-out blue calico dress and a fresh white apron, raising incurious eyes to his.

“I suppose it’s all right if she sits in the hall?” Bassett inquired, still fighting his losing fight.  “She can go in if he stirs.”

“Right-o,” said the doctor, who had been to France and had brought home some British phrases.

Bassett walked back from the hospital alone.  The game was up and he knew it.  Sooner or later—­ In a way he tried to defend himself to himself.  He had done his best.  Two or three days ago he would have been exultant over the developments.  After all, mince things as one would, Clark was a murderer.  Other men killed and paid the penalty.  And the game was not up entirely, at that.  The providence which had watched over him for so long might continue to.  The hospital was new. (It was, ironically enough, the Clark Memorial hospital.) There was still a chance.

He was conscious of something strange as he entered the lobby.  The constable was gone, and there was no clerk behind the desk.  At the foot of the stairs stood a group of guests and loungers, looking up, while a bell-boy barred the way.

Even then Bassett’s first thought was of fire.  He elbowed his way to the foot of the stairs, and demanded to be allowed to go up, but he was refused.

“In a few minutes,” said the boy.  “No need of excitement.”

“Is it a fire?”

“I don’t know myself.  I’ve got my orders.  That’s all.”  Wilkins came hurrying in.  The crowd, silent and respectful before the law, opened to let him through and closed behind him.