"Thank goodness you have come, Varney!" Lord Merehaven said shakily. "It's poor old Reggie Lancing. He simply walked into here dragging on Hope's arm, and collapsed. He said something to the effect that his boy had committed suicide, and some rubbish about missing papers. What does it mean?"
Varney was too busy to answer the question. He removed Sir Reginald's collar and turned down the neckband. Meanwhile the patient was breathing heavily.
"Put him flat on the floor," Varney said. "It's not quite so bad as it looks. A seizure from over-excitement, or something of that kind. Give me a pen and ink and paper."
Varney hastily scribbled some formula on a sheet of note paper, and directed that it should be taken to a chemist and be made up at once. Till he could administer the drug he could do nothing. There was a wait of half an hour before the footman returned. Then the drug was coaxed between the stricken man's teeth, and presently he opened his eyes once more. He was terribly white and shaky, and he seemed to have some difficulty in getting out his words.
"It's the disgrace, Merehaven," he said—"the dreadful disgrace. To think that a son of mine could have been guilty of such a thing! I would not have believed it; it came to me quite as a shock—that paragraph in the late Mercury. I went to look for my son at once, but he had paid the penalty already. He had shot himself, Merehaven—shot himself—shot himself."
The old man repeated the last words again and again in a feeble kind of way. Lord Merehaven was sympathetic enough, but utterly puzzled. He looked at the other and shrugged his shoulders.
"Is this a mere delusion?" he asked. "You don't mean to say that Asturia business——"
The speaker paused, conscious that he was perhaps saying too much. Varney hastened to explain, to Merehaven's horror and astonishment. Positively, this was the first that he had heard of it. And if Captain Lancing had shot himself that was proof positive.
"Good heavens! what a terrible business altogether!" Lord Merehaven cried. "And the mischief that may have been done here! I must see the King of Asturia at once, late as it is, though goodness knows where I am to look, seeing that the king is——"