Instead, he persisted in that doze--which I was convinced was make-believe. As one might watch a conjuror perform his tricks in the privacy of one's own apartment, with a feeling of resentment that he should allow no hint to escape him as to how they're done, so I observed the man in the bed pretend--even to me!--to do the things which I had the best of reasons for knowing he was not really doing. I should like to have constrained him to confession, to have taken him by the shoulders and treated him to a good shaking, so that both the sleep and sickness might have been shaken clean out of him, and he would have had to admit his mummery. I believe that if I had remained alone with him much longer I should have done it. My fingers itched to handle him. Just, however, as I was about to take him in my grip, the door opened and some one else came in. It was perhaps just as well, if the game was to be played out, that I was not detected in the act of committing an apparently brutal and unprovoked assault upon the seeming sufferer. Some sort of explanation would have had to be made: I should have had to compel the patient to admit his fraud to save my character. Otherwise my action might have been construed as an attempt to murder at the very least. The new comer was Reggie. His appearance on the scene I had not expected so soon: nor desired. It had been my intention to coach the patient in certain details of his family history--supposing such coaching to be necessary. It would hardly do for him to be visited by relatives of whom he had never heard. This he had prevented my doing by his determination to act the rôle of dying man up to the hilt. Reggie explained what had brought him. He held out the note which had brought me; which I now remembered I had left with Violet. 'Vi has sent me this? what does it mean?' I moved towards him, glancing towards the sick man, who still feigned slumber. I had hoped to give him a warning look; but the persistence with which he kept his eyes closed rendered my effort futile. 'It means what it says.' I spoke in a tolerably loud tone of voice, hoping that the sleeper would have sense enough to pick up such cues as I might give him. 'Your brother, my dear Reggie, is here--ill in bed.' 'Good gracious!' Reggie's face expressed a variety of emotions. He glanced from me to the bed; from the bed to me. He dropped his voice. 'Is he--is he really bad?' 'About as bad as he can be. The doctor is of opinion that he may expire at any moment.' The tone in which I said this--for Mr. Babbacombe's instruction--seemed to strike Reggie as peculiar. 'Is he--asleep?' 'He seems to have just dropped off.' Reggie moved closer to the bed. I went with him. He regarded the sleeper with looks of curiosity. 'He looks frightfully queer.' 'He can hardly look queerer, and live.' 'I suppose it is Twickenham?' 'Don't you recognise him?' He shook his head.