Abruptly the tramping ceased.
She heard the voice of the Savage parleying with silence.
"Hullo."
"Yes."
"If I do not usurp myself, I am."
"Yes, didn't you hear me say so?
Mr. Savage speaking."
"What?
Who's ill?
Of course it interests me."
"But is it serious?
Is she really bad?
I'll go at once ..."
"Not in her rooms any more?
Where has she been taken?'
"Oh, my God!
What's the address?"
"Three Park Lane-is that it?
Three?
Thanks."
Lenina heard the click of the replaced receiver, then hurrying steps.
A door slammed.
There was silence.
Was he really gone?
With an infinity of precautions she opened the door a quarter of an inch; peeped through the crack; was encouraged by the view of emptiness; opened a little further, and put her whole head out; finally tiptoed into the room; stood for a few seconds with strongly beating heart, listening, listening; then darted to the front door, opened, slipped through, slammed, ran.
It was not till she was in the lift and actually dropping down the well that she began to feel herself secure.
Chapter Fourteen
THE Park Lane Hospital for the Dying was a sixty-story tower of primrose tiles.
As the Savage stepped out of his taxicopter a convoy of gaily-coloured aerial hearses rose whirring from the roof and darted away across the Park, westwards, bound for the Slough Crematorium.
At the lift gates the presiding porter gave him the information he required, and he dropped down to Ward 81 (a Galloping Senility ward, the porter explained) on the seventeenth floor.
It was a large room bright with sunshine and yellow paint, and containing twenty beds, all occupied.
Linda was dying in company-in company and with all the modern conveniences.
The air was continuously alive with gay synthetic melodies.
At the foot of every bed, confronting its moribund occupant, was a television box. Television was left on, a running tap, from morning till night.
Every quarter of an hour the prevailing perfume of the room was automatically changed.
"We try," explained the nurse, who had taken charge of the Savage at the door, "we try to create a thoroughly pleasant atmosphere here-some-thing between a first-class hotel and a feely-palace, if you take my meaning."
"Where is she?" asked the Savage, ignoring these polite explanations.
The nurse was offended. "You are in a hurry," she said.
"Is there any hope?" he asked.
"You mean, of her not dying?" (He nodded.)
"No, of course there isn't.
When somebody's sent here, there's no ..."
Startled by the expression of distress on his pale face, she suddenly broke off.
"Why, whatever is the matter?" she asked.
She was not accustomed to this kind of thing in visitors. (Not that there were many visitors anyhow: or any reason why there should be many visitors.) "You're not feeling ill, are you?"
He shook his head.
"She's my mother," he said in a scarcely audible voice.
The nurse glanced at him with startled, horrified eyes; then quickly looked away.
From throat to temple she was all one hot blush.
"Take me to her," said the Savage, making an effort to speak in an ordinary tone.