The doctor did understand.  He made no vain objections.  He did what he could to patch up his friend for his last struggles with the opposition in the Committee.  “Pro forma,” he said, stethoscope in hand, “I must order you to bed.  You won’t go.  But I order you.  You must know that what you are doing is risking your life.  Your lungs are congested, the bronchial tubes already.  That may spread at any time.  If this open weather lasts you may go about and still pull through.  But at any time this may pass into pneumonia.  And there’s not much in you just now to stand up against pneumonia....”

“I’ll take all reasonable care.”

“Is your wife at home!”

“She is in Wales with her people.  But the household is well trained.  I can manage.”

“Go in a closed car from door to door.  Wrap up like a mummy.  I wish the Committee room wasn’t down those abominable House of Commons corridors....”

They parted with an affectionate handshake.

Section 3

Death approved of Sir Richmond’s determination to see the Committee through.  Our universal creditor gave this particular debtor grace to the very last meeting.  Then he brushed a gust of chilly rain across the face of Sir Richmond as he stood waiting for his car outside the strangers’ entrance to the House.  For a couple of days Sir Richmond felt almost intolerably tired, but scarcely noted the changed timbre of the wheezy notes in his throat.  He rose later each day and with ebbing vigour, jotted down notes and corrections upon the proofs of the Minority Report.  He found it increasingly difficult to make decisions; he would correct and alter back and then repeat the correction, perhaps half a dozen times.  On the evening of the second day his lungs became painful and his breathing difficult.  His head ached and a sense of some great impending evil came upon him.  His skin was suddenly a detestable garment to wear.  He took his temperature with a little clinical thermometer he kept by him and found it was a hundred and one.  He telephoned hastily for Dr. Martineau and without waiting for his arrival took a hot bath and got into bed.  He was already thoroughly ill when the doctor arrived.

“Forgive my sending for you,” he said.  “Not your line.  I know....  My wife’s G.P.—­an exasperating sort of ass.  Can’t stand him.  No one else.”

He was lying on a narrow little bed with a hard pillow that the doctor replaced by one from Lady Hardy’s room.  He had twisted the bed-clothes into a hopeless muddle, the sheet was on the floor.

Sir Richmond’s bedroom was a large apartment in which sleep seemed to have been an admitted necessity rather than a principal purpose.  On one hand it opened into a business-like dressing and bath room, on the other into the day study.  It bore witness to the nocturnal habits of a man who had long lived a life of irregular impulses to activity and dislocated hours and habits.  There was a desk and reading