The Living Mummy by Ambrose Pratt — Read

Next morning early I picked a quarrel with Hubbard, and left him biting his finger nails. I went straight to Jermyn Street with my valise. Weldon was in bed. I told him I had had a fight with Hubbard and asked to be put up for a few days. He agreed with acclamation, though I am sure he was perfectly astounded at my strange request. I proceeded to astound him further. I mendaciously informed him that my nerves were in rags and that I was obsessed with a horrible hallucination of a mysteriously threatened life at night. Would, then, he give me a shakedown in his own bedroom, just for a week? It is wonderful how easy lying comes to one after the first plunge. I did the thing thoroughly. Mind you, I felt all along the utmost scorn for Dr. Belleville's threats against young Weldon's life. But Miss Ottley had asked me to look after him, and I was determined to fulfil the trust to the very foot of the letter.

He was a splendid fellow to live with. It gives me a heartache to remember the anxiety to make me comfortable, the almost absurd cordiality of his welcome, the unselfish sincerity of his desire to please. One would have thought me a superior creation, a sort of divinity in disguise, the way he treated me. I had never awakened such affection in any living thing before, except in a mongrel retriever which once upon a time followed me home and which I had to turn away after it had licked my hand. And the amazing thing was, I had done nothing in the world to deserve it. I had never put myself out of my way in the smallest particular to serve the Captain. When we first met I had treated him with the scantest courtesy and afterwards with a sort of good-natured contempt. Even now I cannot understand it properly. It may have arisen from a secret disposition to hero-worship. Some men are like that.