THE GIRL IN HIS HOUSE
It was half after three when they laid Bordman out on the hospital cot. There was nothing to do but await the end. Any moment the hemorrhage might attack him, and that would be the end.
"I wish to talk," Bordman whispered.
The doctor shook his head. "If you talk . . ."
"Something to deaden the desire to cough for a few minutes!"
"I can do that," said the doctor. "But it will only hasten the end," he added, warningly.
"So much the better. Give it to me!"
A drab little man, with weak eyes, a ragged drab mustache, drab hair; a face that was drab death's sketched on a drumhead. All these years of rectitude, then out of the drab orbit like a comet, only to circle back, beaten, broken! thought Armitage. Why had he done it? What infernal impulse had flung him into the muck of dishonor?
"Tell the doctor to leave us. I feel the drug."
"He wants to talk to me alone," said Armitage.
125
