Minutes passed, and the knocking was not renewed. I turned over. The bed was comfortable enough, but I felt I should sleep sounder if my sister changed her room. This, after all, could easily be arranged.

A TONIC

‘Is Sir Sigismund Keen at home?’

I will just go and see, sir,’ replied the man, opening a door on the left-hand side of the hall. ‘What name shall I say?’

‘Amber—Mr. Amber.’

Mr. Amber strayed into the waiting-room and sat down in the middle of an almost interminable sofa. On either hand it stretched away, a sombre crimson expanse figured with rather large fleurs-de-lys and flanked by two tight bolsters that matched the sofa, and each other. The room had heavy Oriental hangings, indian-red, and gilt French chairs, upholstered in pink. ‘A mixture of incompatibles,’ thought Mr. Amber, ‘is contrary to the traditional usages of pharmacy, but in practice it may sometimes be not inadmissible.’ His mind was sensitive to its environment. Framed in the table-top and table-legs was an anthracite stove, black and uninviting, this July Afternoon, as the gate of hell with the fire put out. Still the man did not come. Mr. Amber murmured against the formality of distinguished physicians. The appointment was a week old, it was Sir Sigismund’s business to be at home; he had crossed the hall before Mr. Amber’s eyes, and yet the servant must ‘go and see’! Like a jealous landlord, fearful lest people should establish a common of pasture on his experience, the doctor kept up this figment of a kind of contingent existence. Mr. Amber was considering this problem when the footman appeared.

‘Sir Sigismund is sorry, sir, but no appointment appears to have been made in your name. Sir Sigismund is to see a Mr. Coral at five o’clock.’

Mr. Amber changed colour.

‘I made the appointment over the telephone, didn’t I?’

‘I don’t know how it was made,’ said the footman, who had moved to the front door and was holding it tightly as though it might escape.

Mr. Amber took a pace forward towards the street; then checked himself and said with a great effort: ‘I think, I am sure, that I must be Mr. Coral.’

The footman stared. ‘But you gave the name of Amber just now, sir.’

Suddenly the situation seemed easier to Mr. Amber. ‘But they’re both so much alike!’ He was too much engrossed in his solution to see the slight change that came over the footman’s manner.

‘Oh yes, sir. Though coral is pink.’

‘That’s true,’ replied Mr. Amber, restored to a quiet dignity. ‘But if you think, they are both connected with the sea, they are both a substitute for jewels worn by people who would prefer to wear pearls—and, and the telephone is so confusing,’ concluded Mr. Amber. ‘I’m sure you find that if you have occasion to use it yourself

Satisfied to all appearances by this explanation, the footman disappeared, and Mr. Amber was presently ushered into Sir Sigismund’s consulting-room.

‘Take a chair, Mr.—er—Amber, is it?’ said the doctor. ‘It’s not often I have the pleasure of meeting gentlemen with alternative names. But my friend the Superintendent of Police tells me they’re not uncommon in the neighbourhood of Scotland Yard.’

Though Sir Sigismund’s manner was reassuring, Mr. Amber declined the proffered chair and seated himself, as near the door as possible, on a towering sculptured edifice, the last in an ornamental series.

‘I hope you don’t think I’m a criminal, Sir Sigismund,’ he began earnestly, ‘or a lunatic. I should be sorry if I had given your servant that impression; he seemed such a nice man. It’s the case with many people, isn’t it, that the telephone confuses them and makes them say what they don’t mean. I’m not unusual in that respect, am I?’

‘Unusual, yes,’ put in the doctor. ‘Not, of course, unique!’

Mr. Amber looked troubled. ‘Well, anyhow, not unique. But it wasn’t about my aphasia—no, not aphasia, absent-mindedness’ (he sought the doctor’s eye for approval of this emendation, and the latter nodded) ‘that I wanted to ask your advice, Sir Sigismund. It was about something else.’

Mr. Amber hesitated.

‘Yes?’ said Sir Sigismund Keen.

‘I’m afraid you’ll think me frivolous, seeming and looking as well as I do, to consult you on such a trifling matter. With your experience, I expect you only like attending cases that are almost desperate, cases of life and death?’

‘Doctors are not undertakers,’ replied Sir Sigismund. ‘Let me assure you, Mr. Amber, that if only from a pecuniary point of view, I like to be in well before the death. My patients often recover. I’m sure I hope you will.’

‘Oh,’ said Mr. Amber, a little scared, ‘it’s not a question of recovery, not in that sense, so much as of establishing the health. I don’t look ill, do I?’

‘I can’t see very well,’ said the doctor. ‘Won’t you come a little nearer, Mr. Amber? This is a more comfortable chair, and it must tire you to talk from a distance.’

Mr. Amber, aware that his naturally confidential voice had to be raised rather ludicrously to make itself heard across the room, complied. He sat down nervously on the edge of the chair.

‘Now,’ said Sir Sigismund, ‘tell me about yourself.’

‘About myself?’ echoed Mr. Amber, looking hopelessly round the room.

‘Yes, yourself’ said Sir Sigismund energetically, ‘and your symptoms.’

‘Oh,’ said Mr. Amber, on firm ground at last, ‘I haven’t any symptoms. I’m only a little run down. All I want is a tonic.’

‘A tonic!’ The idea seemed as unfamiliar to Sir Sigismund as the notion of his own personality had appeared strange to Mr. Amber.

‘There,’ said Mr. Amber in a melancholy tone, ‘I was afraid you’d think me frivolous.’

Sir Sigismund recovered himself. ‘No, not frivolous, Mr. Amber, anything but that. Your request is a very reasonable and sensible one. Only, you see, there are so many different tonics, suitable for different conditions in the patient. There is a type of man, I might say a figure of a man, for whom cod-liver oil would be less beneficial than, say, Parrish’s Food.’

‘Byno-Hypophosphites,’ Mr. Amber corrected.

Sir Sigismund bowed.

‘I’ve tried that,’ said Mr. Amber. ‘It didn’t seem to do me any good; neither did Easton’s Syrup, though there is said to be poison in it.’

There was a pause.

‘I thought you would be able to recommend me something better,’ said Mr. Amber at last, rather lamely.

‘But you give me so little to go on!’ cried Sir Sigismund, exasperated by his patient’s marches and counter-marches. ‘Better for what? On your own showing you are highly strung; if you want me to prescribe for your nerves, I shouldn’t recommend a tonic but a sedative, bromide, perhaps.’

‘Bromide!’ repeated Mr. Amber, awestruck. ‘Isn’t that a drug?’ The doctor suppressed an exclamation.

‘Yes, it is.’

‘I haven’t tried drugs,’ said Mr. Amber reflectively. ‘If I had a drug by me when an attack came on——’

‘Tell me about your attacks,’ said the doctor. ‘You feel faint, perhaps?’

‘Oh, no, not faint,’ Mr. Amber protested. ‘I feel giddy and ill, you know, and the room goes round; and then if I can, I lie down; or when I’m outside I sit on a doorstep; and if I have time I drink some brandy——’

‘How do you mean,’ said Sir Sigismund, ‘if you have time?’

‘Well,’ said Mr. Amber reluctantly, ‘sometimes there isn’t time.’

‘You mean, before you f——’

‘Oh, no, I don’t faint. Everything goes dim and dark, but it’s all over in a minute. If I fainted, there might be something wrong with my heart, and that would be serious and—and interfere with my work perhaps.’

‘But surely your attacks interfere with your work as it is?’ the doctor asked.

‘Only at odd times,’ said Mr. Amber, ‘If my heart was affected I should have to stay in bed like my Aunt Edith; she was my last relation left in the world, and she was bedridden for years.’