"Well, Miss Van Gorder," he said, picking up the bag by its blackened handle, "I can't wish you a comfortable night but I can wish you a quiet one."
Miss Cornelia watched him silently. As he turned to go, she spoke.
"We're all of us a little upset, naturally," she confessed. "Perhaps you could write a prescription--a sleeping-powder or a bromide of some sort."
"Why, certainly," agreed the Doctor at once. He turned back. Miss Cornelia seemed pleased.
"I hoped you would," she said with a little tremble in her voice such as might easily occur in the voice of a nervous old lady. "Oh, yes, here's paper and a pencil," as the Doctor fumbled in a pocket.
The Doctor took the sheet of paper she proffered and, using the side of his bag as a pad, began to write out the prescription.
"I don't generally advise these drugs," he said, looking up for a moment. "Still--"
He paused. "What time is it?"
Miss Cornelia glanced at the clock. "Half-past eleven."
"Then I'd better bring you the powders myself," decided the Doctor. "The pharmacy closes at eleven. I shall have to make them up myself."
"That seems a lot of trouble."
"Nothing is any trouble if I can be helpful," he assured her, smilingly. And Miss Cornelia also smiled, took the piece of paper from his hand, glanced at it once, as if out of idle curiosity about the unfinished prescription, and then laid it down on the table with a careless little gesture. Dale gave her aunt a glance of dumb entreaty. Miss Cornelia read her wish for another moment alone with the Doctor.
"Dale will let you out, Doctor," said she, giving the girl the key to the front door.
The Doctor approved her watchfulness.
"That's right," he said smilingly. "Keep things locked up. Discretion is the better part of valor!"
But Miss Cornelia failed to agree with him.
"I've been discreet for sixty-five years," she said with a sniff, "and sometimes I think it was a mistake!"
The Doctor laughed easily and followed Dale out of the room, with a nod of farewell to the others in passing. The detective, seeking for some object upon whom to vent the growing irritation which seemed to possess him, made Bailey the scapegoat of his wrath.
"I guess we can do without you for the present!" he said, with an angry frown at the latter. Bailey flushed, then remembered himself, and left the room submissively, with the air of a well-trained servant accepting an unmerited rebuke. The detective turned at once to Miss Cornelia.
"Now I want a few words with you!"