“Now,” said he, “I want nobody here but myself and Dr. Crackenthorpe. Go you and fetch him, if he’s to be found.”
Happy to be employed in any useful service, I hurried away on my errand. The door of the sitting-room was shut, at which I was glad. Very little respite gave me fresh lease of hope.
The doctor’s home was close by, in a straggling street of old buildings that ran off our end of the High street, and the doctor himself was, I was told, within.
I found him seated in a musty little parlor, with some ugly casts of murderers’ heads facing him from the top of a varnished bookcase.
“Ah, my friend!” he screeched, cracking his knuckles; “those interest you, eh? Well, perhaps I shall have the pleasure of adding your picture to them some day.”
An irrepressible shudder took me and he laughed, not knowing the reason of it.
“Now, what’s your business?” said he.
I told him.
“Eh,” he said, and bent forward and looked at me narrowly. “Near drowned, eh? Why, what were you doing, you young limb?”
“I went after him,” I answered, faintly, “but I couldn’t get the weeds loose.”