Without so much as a groan, merely a catching at the air, the doctor fell forward upon his supposed patient, and then rolled with a dull heavy sound upon the carpet, to lie motionless—to all appearance dead.
“Yah! what a butcher you are, Rogers!” said the sham patient, in a querulous high-pitched tone.
“Hold your row! Quick! Listen at that door.”
The sham patient sprang to the door at the end of the passage, opened it softly, and stood listening.
“All right,” he whispered, “still as death.”
“Curse you! hold your row about death,” whispered the other as the door was closed. “Lock it.”
“I was going to,” said the younger man, turning the key softly. “Is he there, Harry?”
“Yes; all right,” came in a whisper from the bearded man, who had softly opened the consulting-room door and peered in at the sleeping figure upon the couch. “Quick! come on.”
The man addressed as Rogers had stooped down and then gone on one knee, thrusting the life-preserver into his pocket while he examined the doctor, and not noticing that it slipped out onto the skirt of his coat, and rolled aside as he finished his examination, and satisfied himself that there was nothing to be apprehended there.
He started up, and followed his companion on tiptoe, and the next minute they were gazing down at the man they had tracked from the diamond-fields and run to earth at last.