In accordance with my written route, I got off the omnibus at the corner of Shepherdess Walk, and pursuing that pastoral thoroughfare for some distance, presently plunged into a labyrinth of streets adjoining it and succeeded most effectually in losing myself. However, inquiries addressed to an intelligent fish-vendor elicited a most lucid direction and I soon found myself in a little, drab street which justified its name by giving accommodation to a row of stationary barrows loaded with what looked like the “throw-outs” from a colossal spring clean. Passing along this kerbside market and reflecting (like Diogenes, in similar circumstances) how many things there were in the world that I did not want, I walked slowly up the street looking for Number 23—my patient’s number—and the canal which I had seen on the map. I located them both at the same instant, for Number 23 turned out to be the last house on the opposite side, and a few yards beyond it the street was barred by a low wall, over which, as I looked, the mast of a sailing-barge came into view and slowly crept past. I stepped up to the wall and looked over. Immediately beneath me was the towing-path, alongside which the barge was now bringing up and beginning to lower her mast, apparently in order to pass under a bridge that spanned the canal some two hundred yards farther along.
From these nautical manoeuvres I transferred my attention to my patient’s house—or, at least, so much of it as I could see; for Number 23 appeared to consist of a shop with nothing over it. There was, however, in a wall which extended to the canal wall a side door with a bell and knocker, so I inferred that the house was behind the shop, and that the latter had been built on a formerly existing front garden. The shop itself was somewhat reminiscent of the stalls down the street, for though the fascia was newly painted (with the inscription “J. Morris, General Dealer”) the stock-in-trade exhibited in the window was in the last stage of senile decay. It included, I remember, a cracked Toby jug, a mariner’s sextant of an obsolete type, a Dutch clock without hands, a snuffbox, one or two plaster statuettes, an invalid punch-bowl, a shiny, dark, and inscrutable oil painting and a plaster mask, presumably the death mask of some celebrity whose face was unknown to me.
My examination of this collection was brought to a sudden end by the apparition of a face above the half-blind of the glazed shop-door; the face of a middle-aged woman who seemed to be inspecting me with malevolent interest. Assuming—rather too late—a brisk, professional manner, I opened the shop door, thereby setting a bell jangling within, and confronted the owner of the face.
“I am Dr. Gray,” I began to explain.
“Side door,” she interrupted brusquely. “Ring the bell and knock.”
I backed out hastily and proceeded to follow the directions, giving a tug at the bell and delivering a flourish on the knocker. The hollow reverberations of the latter almost suggested an empty house, but my vigorous pull at the bell-handle produced no audible result, from which I inferred—wrongly, as afterwards appeared—that it was out of repair. After waiting quite a considerable time, I was about to repeat the performance when I heard sounds within; and then the door was opened, to my surprise, by the identical sour-faced woman whom I had seen in the shop. As her appearance and manner did not invite conversation, and she uttered no word, I followed her in silence through a long passage, or covered way, which ran parallel to the side of the shop and presumably crossed the site of the garden. It ended at a door which opened into the hall proper; a largish square space into which the doors of the ground-floor rooms opened. It contained the main staircase and was closed in at the farther end by a heavy curtain which extended from wall to wall.
We proceeded in this funereal manner up the stairs to the first floor on the landing of which my conductress halted and for the first time broke the silence.
“You will probably find Mr. Bendelow asleep or dozing,” she said in a rather gruff voice. “If he is, there is no need for you to disturb him.”
“Mr. Bendelow!” I exclaimed. “I understood that his name was Morris.”
“Well, it isn’t,” she retorted. “It is Bendelow. My name is Morris and so is my husband’s. It was he who wrote to you.”
“By the way,” said I, “how did he know my name? I am acting for Dr. Cornish, you know.”
“I didn’t know,” said she, “and I don’t suppose he did. Probably the servant told him. But it doesn’t matter. Here you are, and you will do as well as another. I was telling you about Mr. Bendelow. He is in a pretty bad way. The specialist whom Mr. Morris took him to—Dr. Artemus Cropper—said he had cancer of the bi-lorus, whatever that is—”
“Pylorus,” I corrected.
“Well, pylorus, then, if you prefer it,” she said impatiently. “At any rate, whatever it is, he’s got cancer of it; and, as I said before, he is in a pretty bad way. Dr. Cropper told us what to do, and we are doing it. He wrote out full directions as to diet—I will show them to you presently—and he said that Mr. Bendelow was to have a dose of morphia if he complained of pain—which he does, of course; and that, as there was no chance of his getting better, it didn’t matter how much morphia he had. The great thing was to keep him out of pain. So we give it to him twice a day—at least, my husband does—and that keeps him fairly comfortable. In fact, he sleeps most of the time, and is probably dozing now; so you are not
