His night of watching coming upon the exhaustion and fatigue of his long and arduous journey of the previous day had gradually overpowered him, and towards dawn he had sunk into a series of dozes, troubled and uneasy; for the events of the night kept chasing each other in wild medley through his slumbers, assuming every form of weird and exaggerated monstrosity, till at last he had subsided into a heavy, dreamless sleep.
Now, however, he awoke with a start. The sick man’s eyes were wide open, and were fixed upon him with an inquiring and puzzled expression. He felt horribly guilty beneath their searching gaze—horribly mean—in fact, he felt himself to be something next door to a thief.
Facts can assume a very cold and impartial aspect when they confront us at our waking hour. Maurice Sellon felt strongly akin to a thief.
He had stolen his host’s secret—nay, more—he had robbed him of actual property. And it was beyond his power to make restitution, for he himself had been arbitrarily deprived of such power; and at the recollection of that ghostly, mysterious claw snatching the document from him in the dead midnight, he shuddered inwardly. The whole business smacked of witchcraft, and something abominably uncanny. He could not account for it, any more than he could account for the fact that he, Maurice Sellon, had crept on tiptoe to the bedside of the man who lay at his mercy—ill and helpless—and had there and then robbed him like a common thief.
All this time the two had been staring at each other, one from his sick-bed, the other from his armchair. Sellon was the first to break the silence.
“Well, old chap, how do you feel now?” he said, striving to throw into his tone a bluff heartiness he was far from feeling. “Had a bad night of it, I’m afraid?”
“Yes, I have rather,” said Renshaw, slowly. “But—when did you come? Have they looked after your horse?” And with the instinctive hospitality characteristic of his class, he made a move as though to rise and personally look to the supplying of the stranger’s wants.
“Don’t move. Don’t think of moving, I beg!” cried the latter, putting out his hand as if to arrest the attempt. “The fact is, I arrived last evening, and found you—er—well, not quite the thing; so I just thought I’d sit here in case you might want anything during the night.”
“How very good of you! I must have had a touch of my old enemy—up-country fever. I picked it up years ago in the Lembombo Mountains, through staying on there too late at the end of a winter hunting trip, and the worse of that sort of infernal business is that you are always liable to a return of it. Yes, I remember now. I did feel most uncommonly queer yesterday. And then you arrived and took care of me? It is more than probable you have saved my life, for I need hardly tell you that to be taken ill in a place like this is apt to turn out no joke.”
“Well, you were in a baddish way, certainly,” interrupted the other, rather hurriedly. “And now, look here. I’m not much of a doctor, but I seem to have a pretty strong notion that when a fellow’s feverish the best thing he can do is to keep as quiet as possible. Which, done into plain English, means that you’ve talked quite enough, and you’d better turn over and try to go to sleep again.”