“We have thought of a plan, Miss—” began the young man, then stopped suddenly, realising that he had not heard our name. “We have thought of a plan which will obviate all that you are afraid of.”
“The only objection to it,” interrupted Mr Grey, turning to him, “being that you will lose your train.”
“That is really of no consequence,” was the reply. “I can wire to my people from the station when to expect me.”
Mr Grey’s interruption annoyed me. I was all on tenter-hooks to hear the “plan,” and I could see that the stranger sympathised with my impatience.
“It is this,” he explained. “A fly is now waiting for me to take me to the station. Mr Grey and I will carry your brother outside, as carefully as possible. He must be carried somewhere, and a little bit down the road will be scarcely farther than back to the house. Then, as I pass in the fly, you must call out to me for help. I shall stop, and between us we will lift him in, and I will take you both home—to the Manor-house, I think you called it? So the driver will have nothing to tell except that his fare behaved with ordinary humanity,” and here he smiled, nor was his smile a grim one. “And on the way,” he went on, “you must give me the doctor’s address if you know it, so that I may send him as I pass through the village.”
“There is no doctor in the village,” said Mr Grey, “but you can save time nevertheless, as his house is close to the railway station.”
“Thank you, oh! thank you so much,” Moore and I exclaimed together, but that was all we had time for, for by now the two men were busied in lifting my brother, with the least possible jar to the poor foot, preparatory to carrying him outside. They were both strong men, and their gentleness and deftness, especially perhaps as regarded Mr Grey, struck me with admiration.
I followed the little cortège meekly enough to the fateful door in the wall. Here they halted, Mr Grey requesting me to unlock it with a key which he had handed to me before lifting Moore off the ground. Then we all passed through.
“Close it, if you please,” said our host, for such he was, however unwillingly. “Draw it to, that is to say, and leave the key in the lock. It cannot shut itself.”
I did as I was bid, and we proceeded down the road till we had reached an unsuspicious distance from the entrance in the wall, sufficiently near the corner which the fly must pass on its way to the station, for it to be easy to attract the driver’s attention without any appearance of collusion. Then they placed Moore in as easy a position as possible; happily the excitement of all that had passed, aided by the stimulus of the brandy and water which Mr Grey had brought with him in a flask, had quite revived the patient, and he declared that the pain was much less severe.