The criminal drained the last drop, and then sank down upon his pillow, while Longman withdrew his arm and replaced the empty glass.
Gentleman Geff did not speak again.
He was possessed of a fear of talking, lest he should “commit” himself.
But he now reflected the more, though his deductions were still confused.
“No wonder I could not remember the details of my trial—a trial that never occurred, but was only a dream of fever. But all the same, if it has not yet come off, it is to come, unless I go!”
He laughed a little to himself at this poor joke, and then he tried to recall the incidents of that “disturbance” at Haymore Hall.
But he could not think consecutively for many minutes before his thoughts became entangled, and dreams were mingled with realities, and false inferences deduced from the union.
“I remember now,” he said to himself, “something about that row at Haymore Hall, though my illness must have made some things seem vague to me on first recovering my senses. But I remember now!”
Even as he spoke the words and tried to marshal the facts in their proper sequence, memory and imagination fled, and left his mind a vacuum again.
Some hours later, after Longman had given him a bowl of strong beef tea and a glass of fine old port wine, his mental faculties rallied again, though feebly, and he thought he could form a correct theory; he would not try to get help in doing this by asking any question. He was too much afraid of compromising himself in some way.