“Yes, mister. Gas an’ electric light and water and telephone — all in them pipes. You wouldn’t think it, would you?”

Soon they came upon an excited group of concert artists and Pier officials. Someone was fanning a door backwards and forwards, and there was much eagerness to describe, rather confusingly, what had taken place. The girl, it seemed, had missed her cue for the whirlwind dance business, and nobody had had time to find out the reason for her absence until after the last curtain, when a locked door and a smell of gas were discovered and reported. The door was easily opened with the key of another door; then the girl was found, sprawled over a couch, half-dressed in the costume of her act, unconscious and breathing heavily in the tainted atmosphere. The tap of the radiator had been full on.

David took in the scene professionally, noting the absence of skin discoloration and the comparative steadiness of the pulse. But most of all he noticed that her injured wrist, the one he had attended in Calderbury six months before, was badly swollen.

There came over him at these times a sort of natural dignity, so that when he asked the crowd to disperse and leave him alone in the room, they did so without much demur.

“Nothing to be alarmed about,” he said, reassuringly.

“You mean she’ll pull through?” queried a thin man in evening clothes.

“Yes, shell be all right soon.”

“You really think so?”

“Why, of course.” And he added, almost as if he were speaking to himself: “These walls are only matchboarding — they’re full of draughts. I don’t think anybody could do such a thing here without stopping up the cracks … it’s extraordinary, the way people don’t think of these details …”

“Well, there’s one detail you can think of to save me the trouble, doctor.”

“Yes?”

“As soon as she comes to you can tell her she’s got the sack.”

David looked up inquiringly.

“I’m the manager and I don’t stand for this sort of thing. So you can tell her — see?”

David was still looking up.

“And tell her to clear out before we fetch the police! She could be locked up for this!”

“I wouldn’t fetch the police if I were you,” said David quietly. “It wouldn’t do your show any good.”

The manager banged the door, and David began — artificial respiration, a hypodermic, just the routine procedure. He went to work with his usual precision, yet with something more than his usual awareness of irrelevancies: the little wooden dressing room, even shabbier than the brick one at Calderbury; the spotted mirror; the litter of paints and powders in front of it; an out-of-date trade calendar hanging on the wall; and — after a little while — the sound of piano and voices striking up the opening chorus of the second show. Odd background, odd accompaniment. And since it is often the oddest things that are apt to move one, so, as he looked at her, noting the closed eyes, the slightly parted lips, and the rise and fall of the breath, what touched him most to pity were the soles of her bare feet, hunched under her as she lay, and dirty from contact with the unswept floor boards.