The Professor makes a Suggestion
'So you've been fighting again, have you?' quizzed Mr. Jones, when he came to visit David in the accident ward of the general hospital, to which he had been conveyed straight from the store. 'And this time there has been real bloodshed. Do you know that you have lain here precisely four weeks, two days short of a complete month?'
'And a precious long time it does begin to feel,' came the joking answer, for the patient so ill but a short while before was now well on the high road to recovery. 'I'm just longing to be out again. To-morrow I get up; in a week I am to be allowed out in the park. In two I shall be back at my lodgings.'
'Perhaps,' agreed Mr. Jones, drawling the word in a manner decidedly professional. 'If you are well enough. If not—well, no matter for the moment. But you are strong enough to sign your name; listen to what I read, and sign if you agree. Of course, I am not going to bother you with a number of details. You can rely upon me implicitly; I will manage things for you.'
He rapidly intimated certain matters to David in connection with the letter he had had from his father, and the will which Mr. Ebenezer Clayhill was so anxious to have settled. Then he obtained our hero's signature.
'The next thing you will hear about the matter will be from the papers,' said Mr. Jones, as he bade farewell. 'I hope we shall be successful.'
Imagine the interest of the public when it leaked out that the hero of the burglary near Bond Street was also the claimant through his solicitor to have the execution of a certain will delayed. The papers rapidly obtained the whole story; for Mr. Jones, though accustomed, as a rule, to professional taciturnness and silence, now opened his lips with a will, and told the whole story as he knew it.
'Not that the tale will affect the judgment of this matter,' he told his friends. 'British justice is too evenly balanced for such a thing; but it will gain more friends for the boy. It will put his case as it is, not as others might garble it, and will obtain the sympathy of all.'
And sympathy it did gain for our hero. Not only that; for information having been received he would be out of hospital very shortly, the case was put back for trial on a later date, no special reason being given.
'Unless, of course, the Judge and jury are anxious to see you,' laughed Mr. Jones, coming to see David again, and quizzing as was his wont. 'But I'm glad to hear you are doing so well. In a week you come home.'