“Who is dead?” I burst out. “Who is dead?”
The red eyes looked redder than ever as Dr. Theobald opened them at the unwarrantable sight of me; and he was terribly slow in answering. But in the end he did answer, and did not kick me out as he evidently had a mind.
“Mr. Maturin,” he said, and sighed like a beaten man.
I said nothing. It was no surprise to me. I had known it all these minutes. Nay, I had dreaded this from the first, had divined it at the last, though to the last also I had refused to entertain my own conviction. Raffles dead! A real invalid after all! Raffles dead, and on the point of burial!
“What did he die of?” I asked, unconsciously drawing on that fund of grim self-control which the weakest of us seem to hold in reserve for real calamity.
“Typhoid,” he answered. “Kensington is full of it.”
“He was sickening for it when I left, and you knew it, and could get rid of me then!”
“My good fellow, I was obliged to have a more experienced nurse for that very reason.”
The doctor’s tone was so conciliatory that I remembered in an instant what a humbug the man was, and became suddenly possessed with the vague conviction that he was imposing upon me now.
“Are you sure it was typhoid at all?” I cried fiercely to his face. “Are you sure it wasn’t suicide—or murder?”