g it
himself--lots of it----" she began bluntly.

"Oh!" cried Sophy. It was a sort of gasp. Then she said hurriedly: "But
it's impossible, nurse. How can he get it? Gaynor, his valet, and I had
all there is. Now we've turned it over to you--with both the syringes."

"He's getting it, ma'am," said Anne firmly. "And he's taking it
hypodermically, too."

"Oh, don't you think you are mistaken?"

"No, Mrs. Chesney. I couldn't be."

"But--but---- Have you----"

She could not bring it out. She could not ask this little stranger woman
whether she had searched Cecil's things for the stuff--for another
syringe.

"Yes, I've hunted--thoroughly--through everything," Anne said quite as a
matter of course, guessing what she had meant to ask. "He sleeps so
heavily, when he does sleep--from the accumulated effects, you
know--that I've even been able to feel between the mattresses. I've
searched the edges for a rip where he might have stuffed it inside. I've
looked through everything--but his letter-box."

She shattered the lump of coal quite as she said this.

"That's why I've come to you. He's in one of those heavy sleeps. I've
got the letter-box and the key in my room. I want you to open it and
look for me. I didn't quite like to do that."

Sophy gulped shame. Its tang was bitterer than wormwood. Then she felt a
sudden anger against this cool, white-capped little creature who
summoned her suddenly to violate her husband's private property.

"No. I can't do that, Nurse," she said coldly. "Not on an uncertainty."

"But it's quite certain," said Anne Harding patiently. "Wait-- I'll
prove it to you."

She turned at last and looked at Sophy.

"In order to be quite sure," she said--"you know, ma'am, Dr. Bellamy had
told me _he_ felt pretty sure that Mr. Chesney was getting more than the
chart showed. Well, to be _quite_ sure, I substituted salt and water for
_four_ out of the six doses I've given in twenty-four hours. Now you
see, ma'am, to cut a patient down suddenly in the doses like that would
make him suffer something awful if he was really not getting more
himself."

Sophy sat gazing at her.

"How would it make him suffer?" she said at last. Her voice was almost a
whisper.

"Oh, nerves--terrible--we've no way of imagining what they go through
when the drug's taken away sudden. I nursed a case once where the doctor
had that method. But I'd never do it again, ma'am. The patient twisted
the bars at the foot of the b