Those were the first words I heard. The first I spoke, I believe, were:
'I suppose the arch collapsed?'
'Ah! To be sure, yes. There was quite a collapse, wasn't there?' said some one blandly. 'However, you're all right now. Just open your mouth a little, please. That's right. Better? Ah! H'm! Yes, there's bound to be pain in the head; but we'll soon have that a bit easier.'
After that, it seemed to me that I began to take some kind of warm drink, and to talk almost at once. As a fact, I believe there was another somnolent interval of an hour or so before I did actually reach this stage of taking refreshment and asking questions. It was then late evening, and I was in bed in the Sydney Hospital. There had been no earthquake, nor yet even the collapse of an archway. Nothing at all, in fact, except that I had been smitten over the head with an iron bar. There had been two blows, I believe; and, if so, the second must really have been a work of supererogation, for I was conscious only of the one crash.
In one illuminating instant I recalled my visit to the bank, my two hundred and forty-seven pounds ten shillings, my intended visit to the shipping-office, the approaching end and climax of my work in Sydney and Dursley--six years of it.
'Nurse,' I said, with sudden, low urgency, 'will you please see if my pocket-book is in my coat?'
'Everything is taken out of patients' pockets and locked up for safety,' she said.
'Well, will you please inquire what amount of money was taken from my pockets, nurse. It's--it's rather important,' I told her.
The nurse urged the importance of my not thinking of business just now; but after a few more words she went out, gave some one a message, and, returning, said my matter would be seen to at once.
It seemed to me that a very long time passed. My head was full of a tremendous ache. But my thoughts were active, and full of gloomy foreboding. Just as I was about to make another appeal to the nurse, the doctor came bustling down the ward with another man, a plain clothes policeman, I thought, with recollection of sundry newspaper reporting experiences. The surmise was correct. The doctor had a look at my head--his fingers were furnished apparently with red-hot steel prongs--and held my right wrist between his fingers. The police officer sat down heavily beside the bed, drew out a shiny-covered note-book, and began, in an astoundingly deep voice, to ask me laboriously futile questions.