“Yes,” said Overton, “I did.”
After the door closed, he repeated to himself: “Yes, by Jove, I did; but I wonder if I shan’t think myself a damned fool in the morning.”
But the processes of belief and disbelief are obscure, and Overton, so far from finding his confidence shaken, woke the next morning with a strong sense of the reality of Vickers’s story; so strong, indeed, that he turned a little aside from his shortest road to the station in order to drive past the Lees’ house, and see if there were any signs of catastrophe there.
There were. Nellie was standing at the door, and though to the casual observer she might have seemed to be standing calmly, to Overton’s eyes she betrayed a sort of tense anxiety. He pulled up.
“Anything wrong, Miss Nellie?”
“My uncle is ill—very ill, I’m afraid,” she answered, and then, as he jumped out of his brougham and came to her side, she went on, “It’s his heart. The doctor is not very hopeful.”
“Dear! dear!” said Overton, “I am very sorry to hear that”; but inwardly he was wondering whether he had not advised Vickers wrongly. If the old man died, he would have been free to go openly under the name of Lee. “Can I do anything for you?” he asked aloud.
“No, thank you,” Nellie answered. “My uncle is asleep now, and Dr. Briggs will be back before long.” And then, a sudden thought striking her, she asked: “Have you a spare minute, Mr. Overton?”
He said that all his time was at her disposal.
“Then you can do something for me. Come into the house. I want to say something to you. If my uncle had not been taken ill, I should have come to pay you a visit to-day.”