“Sorry to rouse you, Jim,” I said.

He flung off the cover and jumped up, upsetting the bottle, which trickled a stale stream to the floor.  “Oh, that’s all right, Mr. Johnson, I wasn’t asleep, anyhow.”

I let that go, and went at once to the object of our visit.  Yes, he remembered the governess, knew her, as a matter of fact.  The Wellses’ bought a good many things there.  Asked as to her telephoning, he thought it was about nine o’clock, maybe earlier.  But questioned as to what she had telephoned about, he drew himself up.

“Oh, see here,” he said.  “I can’t very well tell you that, can I?  This business has got ethics, all sorts of ethics.”

He enlarged on that.  The secrets of the city, he maintained loftily, were in the hands of the pharmacies.  It was a trust that they kept.  “Every trouble from dope to drink, and then some,” he boasted.

When I told him that Arthur Wells was dead his jaw dropped, but there was no more argument in him.  He knew very well the number the governess had called.

“She’s done it several times,” he said.  “I’ll be frank with you.  I got curious after the third evening, and called it myself.  You know the trick.  I found out it was the Ellingham, house, up State Street.”

“What was the nature of the conversations?”

“Oh, she was very careful.  It’s an open phone and any one could hear her.  Once she said somebody was not to come.  Another time she just said, ‘This is Suzanne Gautier. 9:30, please.’”

“And tonight?”

“That the family was going out—­not to call.”

When I told him it was a case of suicide, his jaw dropped.

“Can you beat it?” he said.  “I ask you, can you beat it?  A fellow who had everything!”

But he was philosophical, too.

“A lot of people get the bug once in a while,” he said.  “They come in here for a dose of sudden death, and it takes watching.  You’d be surprised the number of things that will do the trick if you take enough.  I don’t know.  If things get to breaking wrong—­”

His voice trailed off, and he kicked at the old table cover on the floor.

“It’s a matter of the point of view,” he said more cheerfully.  “And my point of view just now is that this place is darned cold, and so’s the street.  You’d better have a little something to warm you up before you go out, Mr. Johnson.”

I was chilled through, to tell the truth, and although I rarely drink anything I went back with him and took an ounce or two of villainous whiskey, poured out of a jug into a graduated glass.  It is with deep humiliation of spirit I record that a housemaid coming into my library at seven o’clock the next morning, found me, in top hat and overcoat, asleep on the library couch.

I had, however, removed my collar and tie, and my watch, carefully wound, was on the smoking-stand beside me.