“Oh, Mr. Brownell, don’t you see that the only way that you can help us in telling the truth about father is by seeing for yourself? Put down your hat and come with me—” and before he had recovered from his astonishment, Brooke grasped Tom Brownell by the wrist and literally led him from the room, up the hallway, not toward the entrance but along the side passage, where the electricity had not yet been turned on and which was in a dim and uncertain light.
Pausing before the door of Adam Lawton’s room, and without releasing her hold of Brownell’s wrist, she turned the handle carefully, entered, and was standing with her companion in the shadow of the bed before the nurse at the opposite side realized that any one had come in, or could even raise her hand in caution. No one spoke, and the footsteps on the thick rug that covered the floor made no sound—the breathing of the pale figure prone upon the bed was the only vibration even of the air.
For two, perhaps three, minutes, that held an eternity of torture to Brownell, who stood with bent head, they remained, so that no detail could escape his notice. Then Brooke led him back to the den, leaving the nurse in grave doubt as to what manner of man this might be who had seemingly been forcibly led into the room where, by the doctor’s orders, no one but mother and daughter were to be admitted.
The moment that the curtains had closed behind the two, Lucy Dean turned from the window with a suddenness that might be described as a bang, except that no noise went with the motion. Drawing two or three long breaths, as a relief to her suppressed speech, she crossed the room and picked up the reporter’s card, turned it over and over and, reading the name with deliberation, put it in her pocket. “Thomas Brownell, Jr., the _Daily Forum_,” she repeated, at the same time making a mental note that the card itself was of good quality and engraved, not printed, an unusual occurrence with the average reporter. Spying his hat, she next seized upon that, discovering at a single glance the name of a maker of good repute and Brownell’s own address, at a comfortable though inexpensive bachelor inn, stamped in gilt letters on the band. Hearing a slight rustling in the hall, she returned to her post by the window, but, instead of standing, she had thrown herself into a chair, half facing the room, by the time that the two returned.