Perhaps the suddenness of everything accounted for my intense feeling; anyhow, my intense anguish cannot be explained in any other way.
Dr. Merril did not inspire me with any great hope. He was a middle-aged man of the country practitioner's type. I judged that he could be quite useful in dealing with ordinary ailments, but he did not strike me as a man who looked beneath the surface of things, and who could deal successfully with a case like Edgecumbe's. Evidently no particulars of the case had been given to him, and from the confident way I heard him talking to Sir Thomas, who brought him up to the room, he might have been called in to deal with a child who had a slight attack of measles.
When he saw Edgecumbe, however, a change passed over his face. The sight of my friend, gasping for breath, with what looked like death-dews on his agonized face, made him think that he had to deal with a man in his death agony.
A few minutes later I altered my opinion of Dr. Merril. He was not so commonplace, or so unobservant as I had imagined. He examined Edgecumbe carefully, and, as I thought, asked sensible questions, which Sir Thomas and Lady Bolivick, both of whom had come into the room, answered readily. Although he did not speak to me, he doubtless noticed how interested I was in his patient, and more than once I saw that he looked at me questioningly.
'I admit I am baffled,' he said at length.
I took this as a good sign as far as he was concerned; anyhow, he was not a man who professed to be wise, while he was in actual ignorance.
'I gather from what you say,' he went on, speaking to Sir Thomas, 'that
Captain Luscombe knows most about him.'
'That is so, Merril,' replied Sir Thomas. 'I have explained to you the circumstances under which he came here.'
'That being so,' and the doctor spoke very gravely, 'I think it would be best for you all to leave me, except Captain Luscombe.'
'There is something here beneath the surface,' said Dr. Merril when we were alone, 'something which I cannot grasp. Can you help me? Evidently you have been thinking a great deal.'