But Mr. Graham-Shute had put up his double eyeglasses, and was
examining the prostrate man with attentive eyes. He shook his head
slowly in answer to his cousin’s gesture.
“He’s sober enough now,” he said, briefly.
Indeed, poor Marrable had been startled into sobriety compared to which
that of the proverbial judge is levity itself. He now turned his eyes
slowly from the spot at which he had last seen the vision which had
startled him, and fixed them on John Bradfield’s face.
“He went round there,” he said, emphatically. “I’m positive. I can
swear it--Gilbert Wryde!”
John Bradfield felt that his teeth were chattering. He could scarcely
command his voice to answer in his usual tones:
“One of the gardeners, most likely.”
Marrable shook his head emphatically.
“It was not one of the gardeners,” he said, with a great deal more
decision than he usually showed. “I won’t trouble you again, John, but
I will find out what I want to know before I leave this place.”
He was trying to rise, and Mr. Graham-Shute helped him. But he could
only move with difficulty, having sprained his left ankle in his fall.
“Here, Bradfield, send some of your men to take him indoors,” said Mr.
Graham-Shute, in a peremptory manner.
“Of course, of course!” assented John Bradfield.
And he gave the necessary orders to two menservants who had by this
time appeared in the doorway.
So Alfred Marrable, protesting all the time with more than his usual
vigour, was carried indoors, and placed by John Bradfield’s orders
in a spare room, which was next to his own bedroom. Then with much
reluctance, and more by his cousin’s orders than by his own, John sent
for a doctor.
In the meantime he suddenly developed a solicitude for his unlucky
friend as striking as his previous neglect. He insisted on remaining
himself by the side of the injured man until the arrival of the doctor,
and, for fear of exciting him, as he said, he would allow no one to
enter the room but himself.
When Stelfox knocked at the bedroom door, and, in his extremely quiet
and respectful manner offered his services to wait on the gentleman,
John Bradfield answered him very shortly indeed, with a scowl upon his
face.
“No, I don’t want you. And you would be better employed in looking
after that lunatic of yours, and in keeping him from frightening people
half out of their wits, than in attending to other folks’ business.”
Stelfox listened to this rebuke in meek silence, with his eyes upon the
ground. When his master had finished speaking, he respectfully retired
without a word, either of protest or of excuse.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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