"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. The messenger retired. Scanning the telegram, I saw it ran as follows-- "Just heard terrible news. Also where you are. Returning at once. Engage rooms for me your hotel.--Mother." The telegram had been handed in at Mentone. Vera seemed a good deal relieved at the thought of seeing her mother again. At this I was not surprised, for, in a sense, she had felt herself responsible for Lady Thorold's evident ignorance of her husband's mishap and illness. She had felt all along, she told me, that she should have kept in touch with her mother. "If my father dies, without my mother having heard of his illness, I shall never forgive myself," she had said to me once. Lady Thorold arrived at the _Grand Hotel_ next evening. She had travelled by the Mediterranean express without stopping, and had hardly slept at all. Nevertheless, she insisted upon going at once to the hospital, to see her husband.