"Did they tell you what he said while he was delirious?" I asked
quickly.
"They told me some of the things he said. He kept on, they declared,
talking of some crime. He seemed to see things floating up before him,
and to be trying to keep them from him. And he talked about gold, too,
they said. He kept rambling on about gold--gold. The nurses didn't
like it. One of them, I saw, had been really frightened by his wild
talk."
This was serious. That a crime had been committed, in which Sir Charles
Thorold had, in some way, been concerned, I had felt sure ever since
that discovery in the house in Belgrave Street. It would be too
dreadful if, while delirious, he should inadvertently make statements
that might arouse grave suspicion.
Statements uttered by a man in delirium, could not, of course, be used
as evidence in a Court of Law, but they might excite the curiosity of
the hospital staff--they had, indeed, already done that--and though I am
no believer in the foolish saying that women cannot keep a secret, I do
know that a good many nurses are strangely addicted to gossip.
"We must, at any cost, stop his talking," Vera declared very earnestly.
"What can we do, Dick? What do you suggest?"
What could I suggest? How deeply I felt for her. It would, of course,
be possible to keep him quiet by administering drugs, to deaden the
activity of his brain, but the doctors would never agree to such a
proposal. Besides, such a suggestion would arouse their curiosity; it
might make them wonder why we so earnestly wished to prevent the patient
talking.
They might jump at all sorts of wrong conclusions, especially as they
knew Sir Charles to be the man whose name had recently figured so
prominently in the newspapers on two occasions.
No, the idea of drugging him, to keep his tongue quiet, must be at once
abandoned.
We had just come to that conclusion, when somebody knocked. A page-boy
entered with a telegram, which Vera opened.
"No answer," she said, and handed it to me.