"Then he is conscious?"
The physician laughed. "Very much so. He is sitting up to take my prescription,—which was a square meal. Whatever the strain was, it isn't off yet. He insists that he must mount and ride this afternoon if he has to be lashed in the saddle; has already ordered a horse, in fact. He is plucky."
"Then he is able to talk business, I suppose."
"Able, yes; but if you can get anything out of him, you'll do better than I could. He won't talk,—won't even tell what the row was about."
"Won't he?" The man of affairs crossed the corridor and tapped on the door of Number Nineteen. There was no response, and he turned the knob and entered. The shades were drawn and there was a cleanly odor of aseptics in the air of the darkened room. The wounded man was propped among pillows on the bed, with a well-furnished tea-tray on his knees. He gave prompt evidence of his ability to talk.
"Back again, are you? I told you I had nothing to say for publication, and I meant it." This wrathfully; then he discovered his mistake, but the tone of the careless apology was scarcely more conciliatory. "Oh—excuse me. I thought it was the reporter."
Bartrow's correspondent found a chair and introduced himself with charitable directness. "My name is Denby. I am here because Mr. Richard Bartrow wires me to look you up."
Jeffard delayed the knife and fork play long enough to say: "Denby?—oh, yes; I remember. Thank you," and there the interview bade fair to die of inanition. Jeffard went on with his dinner as one who eats to live; and Denby tilted his chair gently and studied his man as well as he might in the twilight of the drawn shades. After a time, he said:—
"Bartrow bespeaks my help for you. He says your affair may need expediting: does it?"
Jeffard's rejoinder was almost antagonistic. "How much do you know of the affair?"