Part 28 (2/2)

He hurried through the quiet library with its green-shaded reading lamp and went into the hall.

Tumpany was standing there, his cap held before him in two hands, naval-fas.h.i.+on. His round red face was streaming with perspiration, his eyes were frightened and he exhaled a strong smell of beer.

His hand went up mechanically and his left foot sc.r.a.ped upon the oilcloth of the hall as Morton Sims entered.

”Beg your pardon, sir,” Tumpany began at once, ”but I'm Mr. Gilbert Lothian's man. Master have had an accident. I was driving him home from the station when the horse stumbled just outside the village. Master was pitched out on his head. My mistress would be very grateful if you could come at once.”

”Certainly, I will,” Sims answered, looking at the man with a keen, experienced eye which made him s.h.i.+ft uneasily upon his feet. ”Wait here for a moment.”

He hurried back into the library and put lint, cotton-wool and a pair of blunt-nosed scissors into a hand-bag. Then, calling for a candle and lighting it, he went out into the stable yard and up to the room above the big barn, emerging in a minute or two with a bottle of antiseptic lotion.

These were all the preparations he could make until he knew more. The thing might be serious or it might be little or nothing. Fortunately Lothian's house was not five minutes' walk from the ”Haven.” If instruments were required he could fetch them in a very short time.

As he left the house with Tumpany, he noticed that the man lurched upon the step. Quite obviously he was half intoxicated.

With a cunning born of long experience of inebriate men, the doctor affected a complete unconsciousness of what he had discovered. If he put the man upon his guard he would get nothing out of him, that was quite certain.

”He's made a direct statement so far,” the doctor thought. ”He's only on the border-land of intoxication. For as long as he thinks I have noticed nothing he will be coherent. Directly he realises that I have spotted his state he'll become confused and ashamed and he won't be able to tell me anything.”

”This is very unfortunate,” he said in a smooth and confidential voice.

”I do hope it is nothing very serious. Of course I know your master very well by name.”

”Yessir,” Tumpany answered thickly, but with a perceptible note of pleasure in his voice. ”Yessir, I should say Master is one of the best shots in Norfolk. You'd have heard of him, of course.”

”But how did it happen?”

”This 'ere accident, sir?” said Tumpany rather vaguely, his mind obviously running upon his master's achievements among the wild geese of the marshes.

”Yes, the accident,” the doctor answered in his smooth, kindly voice--though it would have given him great relief to have boxed the ears of his beery guide.

”I was driving master home, sir. It's not our trap. We don't keep one.

We hires in the village, but the man as the trap belongs to couldn't go. So I drove, sir.”

Movement had stirred up the fumes of alcohol in this barrel! Oh, the interminable repet.i.tions, the horrid incapacity for getting to the point of men who were drunk! Lives of the utmost value had been lost by fools like this--great events in the history of the world had turned upon an extra pot of beer! But patience, patience!

”Yes, you drove, and the horse stumbled. Did the horse come right down?”

”I'm not much of a whip, sir, as you may say, though I know about ordinary driving. They say that a sailor-man is no good with a horse.

But that isn't true.”

Yet despite the irritation of his mind, the necessity for absolute self-control, the expert found time to make a note of this further instance of the intolerable egotism that alcohol induces in its slaves.

”But I expect you drove very well, indeed! Then the horse did _not_ come right down!”

Just at the right moment, carefully calculated to have its effect, the doctor's voice became sharper and had a ring of command in it.

There was an instant response.

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