"That's the end of you," said Scarth, with sardonic satisfaction.
"It's the beginning of us all!" said the crime doctor, in a voice they hardly knew. "Do you—can you mean yourself and this lady?"
That lady shook her head and smiled.
"I do, if I swing to-morrow!" swore Alfred Croucher. "I told 'im"—with a truculent thrust of the bullet head—"one night in me cups; an' fust 'e starts squeezin' 'er to marry 'im, an' then squeezin' me to do yer in before yer forbids 'is banns! Oh, 'e's a nut, I tell yer—though we've been the nuts an' 'im the cracker!"
Lady Vera looked like a little ghost, still unable to believe her ears, still staring into space as if the trouble were rather with those great Irish eyes of hers.
But the doctor was the doctor an instant longer. His left hand went out to his patient first.
"You'll sleep to-night! I'll give you the other when it's free," he said, still covering the man with his hands in his pockets, the curtains on each side of him, and a back window just behind.
Then two things happened in quick succession; but the first brought the lover back to life with such a throb that the second was not even seen.
Just saying, "I'm afraid I'm going to make a fool of myself," all that he loved on earth collapsed at his feet. The doctor was down on his knees beside her, getting the girl into his arms. And even Mr. Croucher did not see the curtains close, or hear anything happen behind them; for he, too, was on his knees, holding out a dripping sponge, and babbling faster than the drops pattered on the floor.
"It's right! I done it ... that pore copper in the fog! She sent 'im reelin'—into me arms—but I done all the rest. Never meant to, mind yer, but that's neither here nor there. Ready to swing, I was, an' don't care now if I do! She saved me—little knock-out—an' look 'ow I went an' tret 'er for it!... Gawd, doctor, wot a fair swine I was!"