“You remember the very words?” said Stratton, looking at his friend wonderingly.
“Word for word,” said Brettison slowly, “and always shall. I remember, too, the thrill of horror that ran through my nerves as he stood for a few moments with his back to me, between me and the bed, bending first over his patient, and then straightening himself up and raising one arm—his right—with the fist clenched, all but the index finger, which he passed over his shoulder to touch, with the point of the finger, the spot behind his own ear where the bullet had entered.
“For a few moments I did not understand his gesture; then I grasped the fact, and followed his thoughts. He was, in imagination, holding a pistol to his head as he thought his patient must have held it when the trigger was drawn. He had completely taken my view that I wished to impart, and he was thinking of the inquest and the evidence he would have to give.”
Stratton looked at him for a few moments with dilated eyes.
At last he spoke, for Brettison had become wrapped in thought, and sat gazing before him, as if seeing the whole horror once again.
“And did he,” said Stratton, in broken words, “attend him—to the end; did he say—at the inquest—that it was suicide?”
“No,” said Brettison, looking up with a start from his musings, and watching the effect of his words on his companion; “he tended him, but James Dale, or Barron, did not die. He is living now.”