"Now," he said, "trot out your grievance; but speak briefly and to the point. I can't and won't have my morning wasted. If you meander in your statements, I shall simply row back again to the yacht and leave you there." "It's a curious thing," said Doyle, "that a gentleman like you would find a pleasure in preventing a poor man from earning his living." He spoke truculently. He was evidently very angry indeed. "Don't," said Meldon, "wander off into generalities and silly speculations about things which aren't facts. So far from taking a pleasure in preventing poor men from living, I'm always particularly anxious to help them when I can." "You didn't help me then with your damned tricks, the like of which no gentleman ought to play." "If you refer to yourself as a poor man," said Meldon, "you're simply telling a lie. You're rich, nobody knows how rich, but rich enough to buy up every other man in the town of Ballymoy." "And if I was itself, is that any reason why them that would be staying in my hotel should be hunted out of it?" "Are you talking about Sir Gilbert Hawkesby?" "I am," said Doyle. "Who else would I have in my mind?" "And is he gone?" "He is not gone yet? but he's going without something would be done to stop him." "I'm glad to hear it. I hardly hoped it would have happened so soon. I told you, Major, that I was appealing to him in the right way." "It's a loss of three pounds a week to me," said Doyle, "without reckoning what he might take to drink. I'll be expecting you to make that good to me--you and the Major between you." "It was the cooking did it, I suppose," said Meldon. "That and the state his bed was in," said Doyle. "It was close on eleven o'clock last night, and I was sitting smoking quiet and easy along with the doctor, when there came a noise like as if some one would be ringing a bell, and him in a hurry. It was the doctor drew my attention to it first; but I told him he'd better sit where he was, for it was Sabina's business to go up to any one that would ring a bell. Well, the ringing went on terrible strong, for maybe ten minutes, and--" "Sabina funked it, I suppose," said Meldon. "She did be in dread," said Doyle, "on account of the way the bell was going, not knowing what there might be at the other end of it. That's what she said any way, and I believe her. The doctor spoke to her, encouraging her, the way she'd go and see whatever it might be, and we'd be at peace again. But for all he said to her she wouldn't move an inch. Then I told the doctor that maybe he'd better go himself, for it could be that the gentleman was ill. 'It's hardly ever,' I said, 'that a man would ring a bell the way that one's being rung without there'd be some kind of a sickness on him. It'll be a pound into your pocket, doctor, and maybe more,' I said, 'if you get at him at once before the pain leaves him.'" "I should think O'Donoghue jumped at that," said Meldon.