"My name is Hugo," Hugo answered with a.s.surance. "I was walking along the balconies, as I do sometimes at night, and I heard strange sounds here, and as the window was open I stepped in and found this. Are you a friend of Mr. Tudor"s?"
The other bent in his turn, and after examining the p.r.o.ne body said:
"I was. He has no friends now."
"You mean he is dead?"
"He must have died within the last quarter of an hour or so."
"And nothing can be done?"
"Nothing can be done with death!"
"I take it you are a doctor?" said Hugo.
"My name is Darcy," the other replied. "Besides being Tudor"s friend, I was his physician."
"Yet even for a physician," Hugo pursued, "it seems to me that you have been able to decide very quickly that your friend and patient is dead. I have always understood that to say with a.s.surance that death has taken place means a very careful and thorough examination."
"You are right," Darcy agreed, stroking his short, bright, silky beard.
"There is only one absolute proof of death."
"And that is?"
"Putrefaction. Nevertheless, the inquest will show whether or not I have been in error."
"There will have to be an inquest?"
"Certainly. In such a case as this no doctor in his senses would give his certificate without a post-mortem, and though I am an enthusiast, I am in my senses, Mr. Hugo."
"An enthusiast?"
"Let me explain. My friend Tudor was suffering from one of the rarest of all maladies--malignant disease of the heart. The text-books will tell you that malignant disease of the heart has probably never been diagnosed. It is a disease of which there are no symptoms, in which the patient generally suffers no pain, and for which there is no treatment.
Nevertheless, in my enthusiasm, I have diagnosed in this case that a very considerable extent of the cardiac wall was affected by epithelioma. We shall see. Not long since I condemned Tudor to an early and sudden death--a death which might be hastened by circ.u.mstances."
"Poor chap!" Hugo murmured.
The dead man looked so young, artless, and content.
"Why "poor"?" Darcy turned on him sharply but coldly. "Is not a sudden death the best? Would you not wish it for yourself, for your friends?"
"Yes," said Hugo; "but when one is dead one is dead. That"s all I meant."
"I have heard much of you, Mr. Hugo," said the other. "And, if I may be excused a certain bluntness, it is very obvious that, though you say little, you are no ordinary man. Can it be possible that you have lived so long and so fully and are yet capable of pitying the dead? Have you not learnt that it is only _they_ who are happy?" He vaguely indicated the corpse. "If you will be so good as to a.s.sist me--"
"Willingly," said Hugo, who could find nothing else to say. "I suppose we must call the servants?"
"Why call the servants? To begin with, there is only one here, a somewhat antique housekeeper. Let her sleep. She has been through sufficient to-day. Morning will be time enough for the futile formalities which civilization has invented to protect itself. Night, which is the season of death, should not be disturbed by them."
"As you think best," Hugo concurred.
"And now," Darcy began, in a somewhat relieved tone, when he had finished his task, and the remains of Francis Tudor lay decently covered on a sofa in the drawing-room, that mortuary chamber, "will you oblige me by coming into the study for a while? I am not in the mood for sleep, and perhaps you are not. And I will admit frankly that I should prefer not to be alone at present. Yes," he added, with a faint deprecatory smile, "my theories about death are thoroughly philosophical, but one cannot always act up to one"s theories."
And in the study, at the other end of the flat, far from the relics of humanity, he began to roll cigarettes with marvellous swiftness in his long thin fingers.
Hugo surmised that under his singular and almost glacial calm the man concealed a temperament highly nervous and sensitive.
"You do not inquire about the--the coffin?" said Darcy at length, when they had smoked for a few moments in silence.
As a fact, Hugo had determined that, at no matter what cost to his feelings, he would not be the first to mention the other fatality.
The two men looked at each other, and each blew out a lance of smoke.
"What did she die of?" Hugo demanded curtly.
"You are aware, then, who it is?"
"Naturally, I guessed."
"Ah! she died of typhoid fever. You knew her?"
"I knew her."
"Of course; I remember. She was in your employ. Yes," he sighed; "she contracted typhoid fever in Paris. It"s always more or less endemic there. And what with this hot summer and their water-supply and their drainage, it"s been more rife than usual lately. Tudor called me in at once. I am qualified both in England and France, but I practise in Paris. It was a fairly ordinary case, except that she suffered from severe and persistent headaches at the beginning. But in typhoid the danger is seldom in the fever; it is in the complications. She had a haemorrhage. I--I failed. A haemorrhage in typhoid is not necessarily fatal, but it often proves so. She died from exhaustion."
"I thought," said Hugo, in a low, unnatural voice, "that typhoid marked the patient--spots on the face."
"Not invariably. Oh no; but why do you say that?"
"I only meant that I hope her face was not marked."
"It was not. You mean that you hope her face was not marked because she was so beautiful?"
"Exactly," said Hugo. "And so Tudor brought the body over to England for burial?"
"Yes; he insisted on that. And he insisted on my coming with him. I could not refuse."
"And now he, too, is gone! Tell me, was he expecting it--his own death?"
Darcy lighted another cigarette.
"Who can say?" he observed to the ceiling. "Who can say what premonitions such a man may not have had?"
"I heard talking before I came into the flat from the balcony," said Hugo abruptly. "It went on for a long time. Was it you and he?"
"No," the doctor replied; "I was in here, writing." He pointed to some papers on a desk. "I did not even hear him fall."
"Yet you heard me?"