Turnbull caught Evan's elbow again with quite another gesture. “Come,” he cried, with the harsh voice of one who hides emotion, “come and let us be tactful in chorus.”
The doctor with the pointed beard was already slanting it forward at a more than usually acute angle, with the smile that expressed expectancy.
“I hope I do not hurry you, gentlemen,” he said, with the faintest suggestion of a sneer at their hurried consultation, “but I believe you wanted to see me at half past eleven.”
“I am most awfully sorry, Doctor,” said Turnbull, with ready amiability; “I never meant to keep you waiting; but the silly accident that has landed us in your garden may have some rather serious consequences to our friends elsewhere, and my friend here was just drawing my attention to some of them.”
“Quite so! Quite so!” said the doctor, hurriedly. “If you really want to put anything before me, I can give you a few moments in my consulting-room.”
He led them rapidly into a small but imposing apartment, which seemed to be built and furnished entirely in red-varnished wood. There was one desk occupied with carefully docketed papers; and there were several chairs of the red-varnished wood—though of different shape. All along the wall ran something that might have been a bookcase, only that it was not filled with books, but with flat, oblong slabs or cases of the same polished dark-red consistency. What those flat wooden cases were they could form no conception.
The doctor sat down with a polite impatience on his professional perch; MacIan remained standing, but Turnbull threw himself almost with luxury into a hard wooden arm-chair.
“This is a most absurd business, Doctor,” he said, “and I am ashamed to take up the time of busy professional men with such pranks from outside. The plain fact is, that he and I and a pack of silly men and girls have organized a game across this part of the country—a sort of combination of hare and hounds and hide and seek—I dare say you've heard of it. We are the hares, and, seeing your high wall look so inviting, we tumbled over it, and naturally were a little startled with what we found on the other side.”
“Quite so!” said the doctor, mildly. “I can understand that you were startled.”
Turnbull had expected him to ask what place was the headquarters of the new exhilarating game, and who were the male and female enthusiasts who had brought it to such perfection; in fact, Turnbull was busy making up these personal and topographical particulars. As the doctor did not ask the question, he grew slightly uneasy, and risked the question: “I hope you will accept my assurance that the thing was an accident and that no intrusion was meant.”