“And together with the letters and so on that I found in his satchel when I went through Rackrent Farm again yesterday I think I’ve pieced out at least the first part of the story. I wouldn’t let him go into many details. And when he came to accounting for his presence at Rackrent he grew so feverish and excited that I gave him a hypo and walked out. That part of the yarn will have to keep till he’s a good deal stronger.”
“In brief,” commented Miss Gregg, acidly, “you pumped the poor lad, till you had him all jumpy and queer in the head, and then you got scared and doped him. A doctor is a man who throws medicines of which he knows little into a system of which he knows nothing. I only wonder you didn’t end your chat with Clive by telling him you couldn’t answer for his life unless you operated on him for something-or-other inside of two hours. That is the usual patter, isn’t it?”
“He has been operated on already,” returned Lawton in cold disdain.
Then maddeningly he stopped and affected to busy himself with shaking down his clinical thermometer.
“Operated on?” repeated Doris, as her aunt scorned to come into range by asking the question. “What for?”
Again her pleading voice and eyes won Lawton from his grievance.
“If I can do it without a million impertinent interruptions, my dear,” said he, “I’ll tell you and Thax all about it.”
“Go ahead!” implored Vail.
“As I say,” began the doctor, “I inferred much of this from the letters and other papers I found in Clive’s bag at the farm. He corroborated or corrected the theory I had formed. Briefly, he was wounded at Château-Thierry. Shell fragment lodging almost at the juncture of the occipital and left frontal. Crushed the sutures for a space of perhaps—”
“I’m quite sure there is a medical dictionary somewhere in the library,” suggested Miss Gregg with suspicious sweetness. “And later I promise myself a rare treat looking up such spicy definitions as ‘occipital’ and ‘sutures.’ In the meantime—”