"I am not sure that I dare say, sir, even to you. And it might be looked upon as--as--fancy on my part. One thing is certain, sir, that but for that chloroform being given to her, she'd be alive now."
"Dr. Davenal and Mr. Cray gave the chloroform, Neal," observed Mr. Oswald Cray, in a somewhat distant tone--for it was not to Neal he would admit any doubt, scarcely condescend to hear any, of the judgment of the surgeons. "They know better about such things than we do."
"Yes, sir," answered Neal, as drily as he dared. "Mr. Cray, I am sure, did his best, but he has not had the judgment and experience of my master. Anyway, it seems it was the chloroform that killed her."
"As it has killed others before her--when administered in all deliberate judgment by surgeons of as high repute and practice as Dr. Davenal. The issues of life and death are not even in a doctor's hands, Neal. Goodnight."
"Goodnight to you, sir."
Oswald Cray walked slowly towards his temporary home, the "Apple Tree," half bewildered with the conjectural views opened out to him, and not the least with that last hint of Neal's. He could not get over that giving of the chloroform by Dr. Davenal in the very teeth of his expressed opinion against it. He had supposed, when he first heard of the cause of death, that this contradiction would be explained away: but, instead of that it was more unexplainable than before. There was Mark's confused manner, his covert attempts to avoid inquiry; there was Dr. Davenal's positive denial to satisfy it; there was the man Neal's curious hint. Oswald Cray felt as one in a maze, trying to get at something which eluded his grasp.
How the imagination runs riot, how utterly unamenable it is to the rules and regulations of sober control, we most of us know.
Oswald found his mind balancing the question, "Did Richard Davenal give that chloroform in his calm deliberate senses, believing that it might take her life? If so, where was the motive?" Men don't do such things in these days without a motive; the greatest criminal must have that. Oswald Cray could see none. There was no motive, or shadow of motive, for Dr. Davenal's wishing for the death of Lady Oswald. Quite the contrary; it was his interest--if so worldly a plea may be brought into proximity with these solemn thoughts--to keep her in life. Of all his patients, she perhaps was the most profitable, paying him a good sum yearly. Then--with the want of motive, those dark doubts, born of his imagination, fell to the ground, and he had the good sense to see that they did.
They fell to the ground. And Oswald Cray, as he awoke with a start, and shook himself clear of them, pinched his arms to see whether he was awake. Surely only in his sleep could doubts such as those have arisen of Dr. Davenal!