“It was not one of the gardeners,” he said, with a great deal more decision than he usually showed. “I won’t trouble you again, John, but I will find out what I want to know before I leave this place.”
He was trying to rise, and Mr. Graham-Shute helped him. But he could only move with difficulty, having sprained his left ankle in his fall.
“Here, Bradfield, send some of your men to take him indoors,” said Mr. Graham-Shute, in a peremptory manner.
“Of course, of course!” assented John Bradfield.
And he gave the necessary orders to two menservants who had by this time appeared in the doorway.
So Alfred Marrable, protesting all the time with more than his usual vigour, was carried indoors, and placed by John Bradfield’s orders in a spare room, which was next to his own bedroom. Then with much reluctance, and more by his cousin’s orders than by his own, John sent for a doctor.
In the meantime he suddenly developed a solicitude for his unlucky friend as striking as his previous neglect. He insisted on remaining himself by the side of the injured man until the arrival of the doctor, and, for fear of exciting him, as he said, he would allow no one to enter the room but himself.
When Stelfox knocked at the bedroom door, and, in his extremely quiet and respectful manner offered his services to wait on the gentleman, John Bradfield answered him very shortly indeed, with a scowl upon his face.
“No, I don’t want you. And you would be better employed in looking after that lunatic of yours, and in keeping him from frightening people half out of their wits, than in attending to other folks’ business.”