"Nothing," said Van Sneck. "What do you mean by talking about dropping things. I never dropped anything in my life. I make others do that, eh, eh! But I can't remember anything. It just comes back to me, and then there is a wheel goes round in my head…. Who are you?"
David gave up the matter as hopeless. This was emphatically a case for Bell. Once let him get Van Sneck back to Brighton and Bell could do the rest.
"We'd better go," he said to Enid. "We are merely wasting time here."
"I suppose so," Enid said, thoughtfully. "All the same, I should greatly like to know what it is that our friend Van Sneck dropped."
It was a long and tedious journey back to Brighton again, for the patient seemed to tire easily, and he evinced a marked predilection for sitting by the roadside and singing. It was very late before David reached his house. Bell beamed his satisfaction. Van Sneck, with a half-gleam of recognition of his surroundings, and with a statement that he had been there before, lapsed into silence. Bell produced a small phial in a chemist's wrapper and poured the contents into a glass. With a curt command to drink he passed the glass over to Van Sneck.
The latter drank the small dose, and Bell carried him more or less to a ground-floor bedroom behind the dining-room. There he speedily undressed his patient and got him into bed. Van Sneck was practically fast asleep before his head had touched the pillow.
"I went out and got that dose with a view to eventualities," Bell explained. "I know pretty well what is the matter with Van Sneck, and I propose to operate upon him, with the help of Heritage. I've put him in my bed and locked the door. I shall sleep in the big armchair."
David flung himself into a big deck lounge and lighted a cigarette.
"My word, that has been a bit of a business," he said. "Pour me out a little whisky in one of the long glasses and fill it up with soda…. Oh, that's better. I never felt so thirsty in my life. I got Van Sneck away without Henson having the slightest suspicion that he was there, and I had the satisfaction of giving Henson a smashing blow without his seeing me."
"Sounds like conjuring," Bell said, behind his cigar. "Explain yourself."