A mind which has known a score or more of sleepless nights acquires an invincible clearness of its own, seeing an end which is without peradventure. It finds a hundred perfect reasons for not going on, every one of which is in itself sufficient; every one of which knits into the other ninety and nine with inevitable affinity.
To the mind of Ingolby came a hundred such reasons for breaking out of life’s enclosure, as the effect of the opiate Rockwell had given him wore off, and he regained consciousness. As he did so, someone in the room was telling of that intervention of Gabriel Druse and the Monseigneur at the Orange funeral, which had saved the situation. At first he listened to what was said—it was the nurse talking to Jim Beadle with no sharp perception of the significance of the story; though it slowly pierced the lethargy of his senses, and he turned over in the bed to face the watchers.
“What time is it, Jim?” he asked heavily. They told him it was sunset.
“Is it quiet in both towns?” he asked after a pause. They told him that it was.
“Any telegrams for me?” he asked.
There was an instant’s hesitation. They had had no instructions on this point, and they hardly knew what to say; but Jim’s mind had its own logic, and the truth seemed best to him now. He answered that there were several wires, but that they “didn’t amount to nothin’.”
“Have they been opened?” Ingolby asked with a frown, half-raising himself. It was hard to resign the old masterfulness and self-will.
“I’d like to see anybody open ‘em ‘thout my pe’mision,” answered Jim imperiously. “When you’s asleep, Chief, I’m awake; and I take care of you’ things, same as ever I done. There ain’t no wires been opened, and there ain’t goin’ to be whiles I’m runnin’ the show for you.”
“Open and read them to me,” commanded Ingolby. Again Ingolby was conscious of hesitation on Jim’s part. Already the acuteness of the blind was possessing him, sharpening the senses left unimpaired. Although Jim moved, presumably, towards the place where the telegrams lay, Ingolby realized that his own authority was being crossed by that of the doctor and the nurse.
“You will leave the room for a moment, nurse,” he said with a brassy vibration in the voice—a sign of nervous strain. With a smothered protest the nurse left, and Jim stood beside the bed with the telegrams.