“Mr Jessop Reed, I can dispense with your company, sir. I want to be alone. You can go too, my good woman, and you, Mr What’s your name? Robson. No, you stay, Mr Wrigley. I may want to ask some questions.”
Jessop went out scowling.
“A brute!” muttered the Doctor. “Knows his brother is, perhaps, on his deathbed, and has never sent to ask how he is.”
The next minute he was examining the patient, who lay perfectly still, while a hideous wound in the shoulder, which was evidently of long standing, was bared.
“Curious kind of hurt!” said the Doctor. “Here’s something within which irritates it.”
“Piece of rock splinter, perhaps,” suggested Wrigley.
“Very likely; but he will never get well with that in his flesh.—Don’t groan, man. It’s to do you good. Humph, look here. I thought it was a singular injury.”
He held out a piece of green metal with some fine-looking letters upon it, and Wrigley examined them.
“Eley!” he said. “Why, it is a piece of a brass cartridge.”
“That’s right. The man has been shot. Hallo! That makes him wince. Why, he is hurt here, too, in this leg. No doubt about this. The bite of some animal. Dog, I suppose. Are you sure that our friend here is not a poacher?”