She advanced to the door of a room and opened it softly, and I followed in a somewhat uncomfortable frame of mind. It seemed to me that I had no function but that of a mere figurehead. Dr. Cropper, whom I knew by name as a physician of some reputation, had made the diagnosis and prescribed the treatment, neither of which I, as a mere beginner, would think of contesting. It was an unsatisfactory, even an ignominious, position from which my professional pride revolted. But apparently it had to be accepted.
Mr. Bendelow was a most remarkable-looking man. Probably he had always been somewhat peculiar in appearance; but now the frightful emaciation (which strongly confirmed Cropper’s diagnosis) had so accentuated his original peculiarities that he had the appearance of some dreadful, mirthless caricature. Under the influence of the remorseless disease, every structure which was capable of shrinking had shrunk to the vanishing-point, leaving the unshrinkable skeleton jutting out with a most horrible and grotesque effect. His great hooked nose, which must always have been strikingly prominent, stuck out now, thin and sharp, like the beak of some bird of prey. His heavy, beetling brows, which must always have given to his face a frowning sullenness, now overhung sockets which had shrunk away into mere caverns. His naturally high cheekbones were now not only prominent, but exhibited the details of their structure as one sees them in a dry skull. Altogether, his aspect was at once pitiable and forbidding. Of his age I could form no estimate. He might have been a hundred. The wonder was that he was still alive; that there was yet left in that shrivelled body enough material to enable its mechanism to continue its functions.
He was not asleep, but was in that somnolent, lethargic state that is characteristic of the effects of morphia. He took no notice of me when I approached the bed, nor even when I spoke his name somewhat loudly.
“I told you you wouldn’t get much out of him,” said Mrs. Morris, looking at me with a sort of grim satisfaction. “He doesn’t have a great deal to say to any of us nowadays.”
“Well,” said I, “there is no need to rouse him, but I had better just examine him, if only as a matter of form. I can’t take the case entirely on hearsay.”
“I suppose not,” she agreed. “You know best. Do what you think necessary, but don’t disturb him more than you can help.”
It was not a prolonged examination. The first touch of my fingers on the shrunken abdomen made me aware of the unmistakable hard mass and rendered further exploration needless. There could be no doubt as to the nature of the case or of what the future held in store. It was only a question of time, and a short time at that.
The patient submitted to the examination quite passively, but he seemed to be fully aware of what was going on, for he looked at me in a sort of drunken, dreamy fashion, but without any sign of interest in my proceedings. When I had finished, I looked him over again, trying to reconstitute him as he might have been before this deadly disease fastened on him. I observed that he seemed to have a fair crop of hair of a darkish iron-grey. I say “seemed,” because the greater part of his head was covered by a skull cap of black silk; but a fringe of hair straying from under it on to the forehead suggested that he was not bald. His teeth, too, which were rather conspicuous, were natural teeth and in good preservation. In order to verify this fact, I stooped and raised his lip the better to examine them. But at this point Mrs. Morris intervened.
“There, that will do,” she said impatiently. “You are not a dentist, and his teeth will last as long as he will want them. If you have finished you had better come with me and I will show you Dr. Cropper’s prescriptions. Then you can tell me if you have any further directions to give.”
She led the way out of the room, and when I had made a farewell gesture to the patient (of which he took no notice) I followed her down the stairs to the ground floor where she ushered me into a small, rather elegantly furnished room. Here she opened the flap of a bureau and from one of the little drawers took an open envelope which she handed to me. It contained one or two prescriptions for occasional medicines, and a sheet of directions relative to the diet and general management of the patient, including the administration of morphia. The latter read, under the general heading, “Simon Bendelow, Esq.”:
“As the case progresses, it will probably be necessary to administer morphine regularly, but the amount given should, if possible, be restricted to ¼ gr. Morph. Sulph., not more than twice a day; but, of course, the hopeless prognosis and probable early termination of the case make some latitude admissible.”
Although I was in complete agreement with the writer, I was a little puzzled by these documents. They were signed “Artemus Cropper, M.D.,” but they were not addressed to any person by name. They appeared to have been given to Mr. Morris, in whose possession they now were; but the use of the word “morphine” instead of the more familiar “morphia” and the generally technical phraseology seemed inappropriate to directions addressed to lay persons. As I returned them I remarked:
“These directions read as if they had been intended for the information of a medical man.”
“They were,” she replied. “They were meant for the doctor who was attending Mr. Bendelow at the time. When we moved to this place I got them from him to show to the
