Part 34 (2/2)
”I'll bastinado you.”
”Not if you impaled me, I say.”
”Gregory! If you anger me, I'll make you drink three pints of physic.”
”They are here, eh!” exclaimed Gregory, approaching the hearth, skipping among the flasks of the doctor, and seizing one of them, but he had the sense to choose alcohol, and dragging it from its case, sipped away at it till there was not a drop of it left.
”Leave a little in it, you dog!” yelled the doctor, s.n.a.t.c.hing the flask away from him, ”don't drink it all!”
”I'll drink up the whole shop, but speak I won't unless I like.”
The doctor perceived that he had met his match.
”Then will you speak before Feriz Beg?” he asked.
”I'll speak the whole truth then.”
So there was nothing for it but to open Feriz Beg's door before Gregory and shove him inside.
Feriz Beg was sitting there on a couch, a feverish flush was burning upon his pale face; he still held the jewel in his hand, and his eyes were fastened upon it; just such a similar clasp he had given to Aranka Beldi when they were both children together.
”How did you come by this jewel?” inquired Feriz in a soft, mournful voice.
”She to whom you gave it gave it to me that you might believe she sent me to you.”
At these words Feriz Beg arose with flas.h.i.+ng eyes.
”She sent you to me! She! So she remembers me! She thinks of me sometimes, then.”
”She sent you a letter through me.”
Feriz Beg stretched out a tremulous hand.
”Where is the letter?”
”I flung it into the fire,” interjected the doctor.
”How dared you do that?” exclaimed Feriz angrily.
But the doctor was not afraid.
”I am your doctor, and every letter injures your health.”
”Panajot! you are an impertinent fellow!” thundered Feriz, with a face of inflamed purple; and he smote the table such a blow with his fist that all the medicine bottles tumbled off it.
”Don't be angry, sir!” said Gregory, twisting his moustache at both ends, while Panajot coolly swept together the fragments of the broken bottles and boxes on the floor; ”the worthy man did not burn the letter but only the envelope. I had gumption enough not to entrust the inside of it to him.”
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