A full minute passed while he still feigned sleep.  He heard Allsopp stir discreetly, then the inevitable information broke the silence: 

“Nine o’clock, sir!”

He opened his eyes, murmured something, and closed them again.

The man moved to the window, quietly pulled back the curtains and half drew the blind.

“Better night, sir, I hope?” he ventured, softly.

Chilcote had drawn the bedclothes over his face to screen himself from the daylight, murky though it was.

“Yes,” he responded.  “Those beastly nightmares didn’t trouble me, for once.”  He shivered a little as at some recollection.  “But don’t talk—­don’t remind me of them.  I hate a man who has no originality.”  He spoke sharply.  At times he showed an almost childish irritation over trivial things.

Allsopp took the remark in silence.  Crossing the wide room, he began to lay out his master’s clothes.  The action affected Chilcote to fresh annoyance.

“Confound it!” he said.  “I’m sick of that routine:  I can see you laying out my winding-sheet the day of my burial.  Leave those things.  Come back in half an hour.”

Allsopp allowed himself one glance at his master’s figure huddled in the great bed; then, laying aside the coat he was holding, he moved to the door.  With his:  fingers on the handle he paused.

“Will you breakfast in your own room, sir—­or down-stairs?”

Chilcote drew the clothes more tightly round his shoulders.  “Oh, anywhere—­nowhere!” he said.  “I don’t care.”

Allsopp softly withdrew.

Left to himself, Chilcote sat up in bed and lifted the salver to his knees.  The sudden movement jarred him physically; he drew a handkerchief from under the pillow and wiped his forehead; then he held his hand to the light and studied it.  The hand looked sallow and unsteady.  With a nervous gesture he thrust the salver back upon the table and slid out of bed.

Moving hastily across the room, he stopped before one of the tall wardrobes and swung the door open; then after a furtive glance around the room he thrust his hand into the recesses of a shelf and fumbled there.

The thing he sought was evidently not hard to find. for almost at once he withdrew his hand and moved from the wardrobe to a table beside the fireplace, carrying a small glass tube filled with tabloids.

On the table were a decanter, a siphon, and a water-jug.  Mixing some whiskey, he uncorked the tube, again he glanced apprehensively towards the door, then with a very nervous hand dropped two tabloids into the glass.

While they dissolved he stood with his hand on the table and his eyes fixed on the floor, evidently restraining his impatience.  Instantly they had disappeared he seized the glass and drained it at a draught, replaced the bottle in the wardrobe, and, shivering slightly in the raw air, slipped back into bed.