'You might reach that pocket-book, and ring for Mrs. Davies,' he would
say in so casual a way that of course you would ring. On Mrs. Davies's
appearance he would be fumbling about among the papers in his
pocket-book, and presently he would say, with a look of frustration that
went to one's heart--'I've got a ten-pound note somewhere here for you,
Mrs. Davies, to pay you up till Saturday, but somehow I seem to have
lost it. Yet it must be somewhere about. Perhaps you'll find it as you
make the bed in the morning. I'm so sorry to have troubled you....'

And then he would grow tired and doze a little on his pillow.

Suddenly he would be alert again, and with a startling vividness tell me
strange stories from the dreamland into which he was now passing.

I had promised to see him on Monday, but had been prevented, and had
wired to him accordingly. This was Tuesday.

'You needn't have troubled to wire,' he said. 'Didn't you know I was in
London from Saturday to Monday?'

'The doctor and Mrs. Davies didn't know,' he continued with the creepy
cunning of the dying: 'I managed to slip away to look at a house I think
of taking--in fact I've taken it. It's in--in--now, where is it? Now
isn't that silly? I can see it as plain as anything--yet I cannot, for
the life of me, remember where it is, or the number.... It was somewhere
St. John's Wood way ... never mind, you must come and see me there, when
we get in....'

I said he was dying in debt, and thus the heaven that lay about his