“Read them to me, Jim,” Ingolby repeated irritably. “Be quick.”
They were not wires which Ingolby should have heard at the time, when his wound was still inflamed, when he was still on the outer circle of that artificial sleep which the opiates had secured. They were from Montreal and New York, and, resolved from their half-hidden suggestion into bare elements, they meant that henceforth others would do the work he had done. They meant, in effect, that save for the few scores of thousand dollars he had made, he was now where he was when he came West.
When Jim had finished reading them, Ingolby sank back on the pillows and said quietly:
“All right, Jim. Put them in the drawer of the table and I’ll answer them to-morrow. I want to get a little more sleep, so give me a drink, and then leave me alone—both nurse and you—till I ring the bell. There’s a bell on the table, isn’t there?”
He stretched out a hand towards the table beside the bed, and Jim softly pushed the bell under his fingers.
“That’s right,” he added. “Now, I’m not to be disturbed unless the doctor comes. I’m all right, and I want to be alone and quiet. No one at all in the room is what I want. You understand, Jim?”
“My head’s just as good to get at what you want as ever it was, and you goin’ have what you want, I guess, while I’m on deck,” was Jim’s reply.
Jim put a glass of water into his hand. He drank very slowly, was indeed only mechanically conscious that he was drinking, for his mind was far away.
After he had put the glass down, Jim still stood beside the bed, looking at him.
“Why don’t you go, as I tell you, Jim?” Ingolby asked wearily.