Flager found strength to move his head from one side to the other.
'No,' he said. 'I just want to sleep.'
And with a deep groan he let his swollen eyelids droop again, and sank back into soothing abysses of delicious rest.
When he woke up again he was in his own bed, in his own bedroom. For a long time he lay without moving, wallowing in the heavenly comfort of the soft mattress and cool linen, savouring the last second of sensual pleasure that could be squeezed out of the most beautiful awakening that he could remember.
'He's coming round,' said a low voice at last; and with a sigh Flager opened his eyes.
His bed seemed to be surrounded with an audience such as a seventeenth-century monarch might have beheld at a levee. There was his valet, his secretary, his doctor, a nurse, and a heavy and stolid man of authoritative appearance who held an unmistakable bowler hat. The doctor had a hand on his pulse, and the others stood by expectantly.
'All right, Sir Melvin,' said the physician. 'You may talk for a little while now, if you want to, but you mustn't excite yourself. This gentleman here is a detective who wants to ask you a few questions.'
The man with the bowler hat came nearer.
'What happened to you, Sir Melvin?' he asked.
Flager stared at him for several seconds. Words rose to his lips, but somehow he did not utter them.
'Nothing,' he said at length. 'I've been away for the week-end, that's all. What the devil's all this fuss about?'
'But your back, Sir Melvin!' protested the doctor. 'You look as if you'd had a terrible beating——'
'I had a slight accident,' snapped Flager. 'And what the devil has it got to do with you, sir, anyway? Who the devil sent for all of you?'
His valet swallowed.
'I did, Sir Melvin,' he stammered. 'When I couldn't wake you up all day yesterday—and you disappeared from the theatre without a word to anybody, and didn't come back for two days ——'
'And why the devil shouldn't I disappear for two days?' barked Flager weakly. 'I'll disappear for a month if I feel like it. Do I pay you to pry into my movements? And can't I sleep all day if I want to without waking up to find a lot of quacks and policemen infesting my room like vultures? Get out of my house, the whole damned lot of you! Get out, d'you hear?'
Somebody opened the door, and the congregation drifted out, shaking its heads and muttering, to the accompaniment of continued exhortations in Flager's rasping voice.
His secretary was the last to go, and Flager called him back.
'Get Nyson on the telephone,' he ordered. 'I'll speak to him myself.'
The secretary hesitated for a moment, and then picked up the bedside telephone and dialled the number dubiously.
Flager took the instrument as soon as his manager answered.
'Nyson?' he said. 'Get in touch with all our branch depots immediately. From now on, all our drivers will be on a five-hour day, and they get a twenty per cent rise as from the date we took them on. Engage as many more men as you need to make up the schedules.'
He heard Nyson's incredulous gasp over the line.
