The Great Secret Part 7

"A nice quiet part of the hotel this," my guide remarked, glancing towards me.

"Very!" I answered dryly.

"A man might be hidden here very securely," he added.

"I can well believe it," I a.s.sented.

He knocked softly at the third door on the left. A woman's voice answered him. A moment later, the door was opened by a nurse in plain hospital dress.

"Good evening, nurse!" my companion said cheerfully. "This gentleman would like to see Mr. Guest! Is he awake?"

The nurse opened the door a little wider, which I took for an invitation to enter. She closed it softly behind me. My guide remained outside.

The room was a very small one, and furnished after the usual hotel fas.h.i.+on. The only light burning was a heavily-shaded electric lamp, placed by the bedside. The nurse raised it a little, and looked down upon the man who lay there motionless.

"He is asleep," she remarked. "It is time he took his medicine. I must wake him!"

She spoke with a p.r.o.nounced foreign accent. Her fair hair and stolid features left me little doubt as to her nationality. I was conscious of a strong and instinctive dislike to her from the moment I heard her speak and watched her bending over the bed. I think that her face was one of the most unsympathetic which I had ever seen.

She poured some medicine into a gla.s.s, and turned on another electric light. Her patient woke at once. Directly he opened his eyes, he recognized me with a little start.

"You!" he exclaimed. "You!"

I sat down on the edge of the bed.

"You haven't forgotten me then?" I remarked. "I'm sorry you're queer!

Nothing serious, I hope?"

He ignored my words. He was looking at me all the time, as though inclined to doubt the evidence of his senses.

"Who let you come--up here?" he asked in a whisper.

"I made inquiries about you, and got permission to come up," I answered.

"How are you feeling this evening?"

"I don't understand why they let you come," he said uneasily. "Stoop down!"

The nurse came forward with a winegla.s.s.

"Will you take your medicine, please?" she said.

"Presently," he answered, "put it down."

She glanced at the clock and held the gla.s.s out once more.

"It is past the time," she said.

"I have had two doses to-day," he answered. "Quite enough, I think. Set it down and go away, please. I want to talk with this gentleman."

"Talking is not good for you," she said, without moving. "Better take your medicine and go to sleep!"

He took the gla.s.s from her hand, and, with a glance at its contents which puzzled me, drank it off.

"Now will you go?" he asked, handing back the gla.s.s to her.

She dragged her chair to the bedside.

"If you will talk," she said stolidly, "I must watch that you do not excite yourself too much!"

He glanced meaningly at me.

"I have private matters to discuss!" he said.

"You are not well enough to talk of private matters, or anything else important," she declared. "You will excite yourself. You will bring on the fever. I remain here to watch. It is by the doctor's orders."

She sat down heavily within a few feet of us.

"You speak French?" Guest asked me.

I nodded.

"Fairly well!"

"Watch her! See whether she seems to understand. I want to speak of what she must not hear."

She half rose from her chair. So far as her features could express anything, they expressed disquietude.

"She does not understand," I said. "Go on!"

She bent over the bedside.

"You must not talk any more," she said. "It excites you! Your temperature is rising."

He ignored her altogether.

"Listen," he said to me, "why they have let you come here I cannot tell!

You know that I am in prison--that I am not likely to leave here alive!"

"I don't think that it is so bad as that," I a.s.sured him.

"It is worse! I am likely to die without the chance of finis.h.i.+ng--my work. Great things will die with me. G.o.d knows what will happen."

"You have a doctor and a hospital nurse," I remarked. "That doesn't look as though they meant you to die!"

"You don't know who I am, and you don't know who they are," he answered, dropping his voice almost to a whisper.

"I want a month, one more month, and I might cheat them yet!"