“Pull as tight as you can. I must have cut a vein. Excuse me, Uncle James. I will just get Johnson to make a tourniquet. He is as good as a doctor. I must apologize for making such a mess. If you will just have a look at the papers; you will find them over there,” jerking his head in the direction of the table at which he had been writing when his uncle came in. “I won't be a minute, and then I shall be quite at your service.” He hurried out of the room.
Mr. Collyer walked over to the writing-table and took up a paper. But he was feeling too restless and excited to read. Events were moving too quickly for the rector of Wexbridge. Hitherto, except for his anxiety over Tony, his had been a calmly ordered life. Now, with his journey to London and subsequent discovery of the loss of the emeralds, he had been plunged into a veritable vortex of horror and bewilderment. Two things alone he held to through all: his faith in Heaven and his faith in Tony. Whoever else might distrust Tony Collyer and think that he had had far more opportunities than anyone else in the world of possessing himself of the emeralds, his father had never doubted him. He had seen a gleam of pity in the eyes of the detective who had brought him the news that the emeralds had been traced, which had told him who was suspected of having taken them. He was thinking of it now, and asking himself for the hundredth time who the culprit could have been, as at last he seated himself in Todmarsh's chair and reached out for a paper which lay folded at the back of the inkstand. But he drew back with an exclamation of distaste.
There was blood on the writing-table, on the inkstand, on the cover of the blotting-book. The first spurt from Aubrey's wrist had apparently gone right over them all. The orderly soul of the rector was revolted. He opened the blotting-book and tearing out a sheet proceeded to mop up the blood. He tore up the blotting-paper and took up each spot separately. But when the paper was finished there were still spots of blood scattered over the writing-table. Turning back to the blotting-book he tore out another sheet.
“Wonderful!” he said to himself. “It is wonderful that so slight a thing, a mere slip of the knife, should inflict so much damage. I should not have thought it possible.”
And as he voiced his thoughts, his long, lean fingers were pulling out bits of pink blotting-paper and dabbing them down on the drops of scarlet blood, then rolling them up into damp red pellets and dropping them into the waste-paper-basket. Then all at once a strange thing happened. As his fingers moved swiftly, mechanically over their work, his gaze went back to the open blotter.
There on the leaf, as it had lain beneath the paper he had torn out, was a piece of paper. Just a very ordinary piece of paper with a few lines in a woman's clear writing scrawled across it.
The Rev. James Collyer read them over with no particular intention of doing so; then as his brain slowly took in the sense of what he read his fingers stopped working. He never knew how long he stood there, staring at that paper, while his lips moved noiselessly, while every drop of colour drained slowly from his face and the stark horror in his eyes deepened. At last he moved. The bits of paper had dropped from his hands and lay in an untidy heap on the table. With a quick, furtive gesture he caught up the piece of paper, and moving quickly he thrust it between the bars of the grate into the sluggish fire inside. It burst into a flame and the rector stood there and watched it burn. When nothing was left but bits of greyish ash he turned away and put up his hands to his forehead. It was wet—great drops of sweat were rolling into his eyes. A few minutes later a messenger, one of the Confraternity, coming down from the room of the Head, found the Rev. James Collyer letting himself out at the front door.
“Mr. Todmarsh desired me to say, sir, that the cut is much deeper than he thought. We have sent for the doctor, and it may be some time before he is ready to come to you. But, if you will wait, he will be very pleased——”
“No, no! I won't wait,” said the rector thickly, in tones that none of his parishioners would have recognized as his. “He—he—my business is not important.”
A wild idea that of a certainty the clergyman had been drinking shot through the brain of Todmarsh's messenger, as he stood at the open door watching the tall, lean figure of the clergyman making its way along the pavement and saw it sway more than once from side to side.