When he had finished, and sat looking at the fire, I had to tell him what I felt.
"I'm awfully indebted to you, Lockhart," was what I said. "You've pulled me together and made a man of me again, and I can't thank you enough. I'm afraid we haven't been such friends as we ought to have been"—and I held out my hand. He took it and there was a strained smile upon his wizened little face.
"Carey," he said, "don't you be downhearted, for you are going to have your chance yet, unless I am very much mistaken."
"What do you mean?" I asked, for there was obviously something behind his words.
For answer, he did a curious thing. He slipped out of his arm-chair, hopped across the room like a sparrow, and as quietly, and opened the door, looking into the passage. Then he closed it and came back into the middle of the room.
"In the first place, John Carey," he said, "I mean that there is something very wrong about this house."
CHAPTER III
BERNARD CAREY, LIEUTENANT-COMMANDER OF SUBMARINES
I had just finished my tub the next morning, and was about to shave, when there was a knock at my bedroom door. The school porter came in with a message—"the Doctor sends his compliments, sir, and will you give him the pleasure of your company at breakfast this morning?"