"Tell him I believe it. I'll go and find the grave-digger. Ask
Fastnet, and Compton, and all of them. No more sherry, thanks. Yes,
sir, I said you were no gentleman. I repeat it. You have no right to
mention her name. Shut the door, Rosalind. There's only eleven months
to do it in. He is waiting at the General Post Office. Armstrong has
gone away. They expelled him from the club."
"Poor fellow," sighed the captain, as he smoothed the sufferer's pillow;
"poor fellow! How absurdly he talks."
So engrossed was he in his ministrations that he failed to perceive the
door behind him softly open and a gentleman enter.
Mr Armstrong had outstripped the doctor in the race to town. Without a
word the tutor walked to the bed and bent over the troubled form of his
pupil. Then with face almost as white as that of his enemy, he turned.
"What brings you here?" gasped the captain.
"How long has he been like this?" demanded the tutor.
"Do you hear my question?"
"Do you hear mine?"
The weaker man capitulated, with a malediction, to the stronger.
"Since yesterday. He is being carefully tended."
"By whom--you alone?"
"By a doctor."
"What doctor?"
"When I know your right to catechise me, I will answer," snarled the
captain.
Mr Armstrong rang the bell.
"Light the fire here at once," said he to the maid, "and then send the
messenger up."
In the interval the two men stood eyeing one another, while the patient
from time to time tossed on his pillow and muttered to himself.
Mr Armstrong hurriedly scrawled two notes.
"Take a cab, and leave this note at --- Hospital. Let the nurse I have
asked for come back in the cab at once. Then go on with this note to
Sir William Dove, and bring word from him the earliest moment he can be
here. Don't lose an instant."
"Captain Oliphant," said he, as soon as the messenger had gone, "three
is too many for this room. I am here to relieve guard. You need rest.
Dr Brandram will be here any moment. Bring him up directly he comes."
Captain Oliphant was certainly deserving of a little sympathy. He had
borne the burden and heat of the day, and now another was entering into
his labour. But the tutor's tone had an ugly ring about it, which, for
the moment, cowed the injured gentleman, and constrained him, after
glowering for a moment or two, and trying to articulate a protest,
meekly to withdraw.
"My responsibility ends where yours begins," said he, with his best
sneer. "I grudge none of the trouble I have taken for the dear boy, but
I must decline to remain here as the assistant of Signor Francisco the
music-hall cad."
"I can imagine it might be painful," said Mr Armstrong drily; "but the
immediate thing to be desired is that you should not consume the oxygen
in this room. Explanations will do later."
Captain Oliphant was not at hand that evening to meet the doctors. A
business engagement had summoned him to Maxfield, where he rejoiced the
hearts of his two children by a sudden arrival at breakfast-time.
A curt note from Armstrong the same afternoon apprised him that his
movements had been anticipated.
"Doctors not without hope. Admirable nurse secured. Brandram and I
remain here."
Captain Oliphant derived scant consolation from this announcement, and
quite forgot his business engagement in his mortification and ill
temper. He dropped in during the day to see Mr Pottinger, to discuss
his grievance with that legal luminary. But Mr Pottinger, as the
reader is aware, had complications of another kind to disclose. He
astonished his visitor with an account of the surprise visit of Mr
Ratman a few days previously, and of that gentleman's astounding claims
to the name of Ingleton.
"What!" exclaimed the captain, "you mean to say that scoundrel actually
claimed to be the lost son? I always had a high opinion of his
impudence, but I never imagined it capable of that. Why, my dear sir, I
have known him as a pettifogging money-lender in India for years."
"Quite so; but did you know why and when he came to India?"
"I can't say I did. Surely you don't credit his story?"
"Well, not exactly. But it strikes me the gentleman will give us some
difficulty."
"Why? What good can it do him even if he is what he claims! He cannot
upset the will, which emphatically cuts him out of every possibility of
benefit."
"No; that leaves him no loophole, certainly. But he may calculate on
working on the chivalry of his younger brother, or if that fails, on
blackmailing him."
"If so, he will have us to deal with. For once in a way Armstrong and I
are likely to be of the same opinion. Surely there is evidence enough
to prosecute for conspiracy."
"Hardly. He claims nothing but the name. He admits he has no rights.
My opinion, Captain Oliphant, is that we have not heard the end of him."
"Very likely not, especially as I unluckily owe him money."
"That is awkward. The sooner you square accounts and get rid of him the
better."
"Easier said than done," remarked the captain, and returned with a
decided headache to Maxfield.
Roger, with Armstrong to nurse him, with Dr Brandram to attend him,
with his own strong bias towards life to buoy him up, emerged slowly
from the valley of the shadow of death, and in due time stood once more
on his feet. Weeks before that happened he had told and heard all that
was to be said about his lost brother. Dr Brandram had recounted the
incident at Miss Jill's party, and he in turn had confided to his tutor
his meeting with Fastnet, and the feeble clue in which that conference
had resulted.
"Armstrong, old fellow," said he one day at the close of the year,
"won't you help me in this? I know you hate the business, and think me
a fool for my pains. I must do it, with you or without you, and would
sooner do it with you. In ten months it will be too late."
"I hate the business, as you say, but you may count on me; only don't
ask me to hail Mr Ratman as Squire of Maxfield, or subscribe a penny to
his maintenance, a day before his claim is proved."
"You are a brick; I was a cad ever to doubt it. Let us start next week
for Boulogne."
"Quite so," said the tutor, screwing his glass viciously into his eye;
"let us go to Boulogne by all means."