The doctor settled himself in a chair.
"Yes, that tiredness is exactly what my dose will give a chance to," he said. "You are tired and excited—a horrible combination; and your excitement would certainly keep you awake. That I hope to remove by this sedative draught, and let your tiredness act naturally. But I must really congratulate you on your nerves. In the last ten days you have had enough escapes to last a lifetime, and, upon my word, you don't look used up. A very fine nervous constitution. Mr. Francis also used to have the same power of going through things that would have caused most men to break down utterly."
"Yes, he has been through awful trouble," said Harry, "and really he does not seem more than a man of sixty."
"Trouble of the most horrible kind," said the doctor. "May I ask you, Lord Vail, if Miss Aylwin is any relation to——"
"Yes," interrupted Harry; "her mother was Mrs. Harmsworth."
"I see you know the story. I was associated somewhat closely with it; I was, in fact, the doctor who gave evidence at the coroner's inquest."
Again Harry forgot his own perplexities.
"Ah, tell me about that," he said.
"There is little to tell. The conclusion I arrived at was that the death of Mr. Harmsworth might easily have been accidental or self-inflicted; that it was, in fact, the gun he carried which killed him. That, of course, was the crucial point. The nature of the wound appeared to me compatible with that interpretation."
"I knew that you were an old friend of my uncle's," said Harry. "But I did not know that your association with him was so intimate as that."