The merest movement of the tawny, leonine head gave assent.
"I'll tell him." And then the surgeon took a closer look. Scripps's bearded chin was on his breast. His face, in spite of its tan, was deathly white. "By the way," he added, "you'd better have a brandy peg. You've lost some blood, you know, and—"
"That's my business," the other interrupted roughly. "You're a sawbones, not a medical man. And a sawbones sans merci, at that. Otherwise you'd have begun with the cocain, instead of ending with it."
Mayhan turned away without another word and made a wry face behind the savage's back. Two minutes later he was down the stairs and in the hotel porch, where he was confronted by young Andrews.
"I saw you go in," lied the latter nervously. "And I've been waiting for you. What happened? I've a reason for asking."
The young surgeon, whose faculty for putting two and two together was as acute as the next man's, sensed the reason at once.
"He won't die," he answered—"if that's what you want to know."
"Who won't die?" Andrews came back evasively. He had volunteered to get what information he could for Mrs. Darling, and he was distinctly uncomfortable under the attitude taken by this man whom he had started to question.
"The boor upstairs who got in the way of someone's forty-five-caliber automatic. It wasn't by any chance yours, I suppose?"
The blood rushed to Andrews's face, but in the dim light of the porch it is probable that Mayhan failed to observe it.