Eight days later the artist with the lazy eyes rose from his leather-topped table to greet Miss Valerie French.
Handing her to a chair, he resumed his seat, and, after a word or two upon the weather, turned straight to the point.
"I saw Major Lyveden for the first time last Sunday week. We met in the morning, and he gave me tea the same afternoon. The next day he went up to London—on business of some sort—but I saw him on Tuesday and again on Friday and Saturday.
"I don't propose to trouble you with technical terms. All the same, it's not always possible for a medical man to render his language literally into the King's English. Now and again I shall give you rather a free translation, so you mustn't hold me too tight to anything I may say. I tell you this, because I'm going to state facts and not hand you mere expressions of opinion."
Valerie nodded intelligently, and the speaker cleared his throat.
"Now, Miss French, one thing is manifest. If Major Lyveden remains at Gramarye, he will lose his reason." The doctor paused, and for the first time Valerie noticed the sober, methodical tick of a grandfather's clock. This, so far from spoiling, served to enrich the silence investing the latter with an air of couchant dignity which was most compelling. "He is at present the prey of certain malignant forces—the more immediate of them natural; some, I believe, unnatural—and nothing short of his removal from where he is now can set him free. I'm not certain that even removal will be entirely effective. But it's obviously the first step. If a man is down with malaria, the first thing to do is to get him out of the swamp."
Valerie was very pale, but her voice did not tremble.
"And supposing he won't leave…?"
"He must be taken away—forcibly. Listen. At the village inn I picked up a lot of news. All sorts of rumours are current—all touching Gramarye. Most of them are nonsense, and I won't repeat them. Others are founded on hard fact. Have you heard of a Colonel Winchester?"
Valerie nodded.