“It would be interesting,” said Mrs. Harwood, “but a little exciting; and, if he saw him so well, why didn’t he secure him there and then?”
“His attention, ma’am, was called off by the gentleman as he thought was dying; but I don’t think as it is too late.”
Did the detective glance into the corner too, at Dolff standing in dark shadow against the wall?
“I am only afraid it will be too much for you in your weak state,” said Gussy, looking anxiously at her patient.
“We’ll let Dolff decide,” said Meredith, with once more that dreadful laugh. “Come, give us your advice, as you have had all the previous information. Shall we have this man in who can identify—the murderer, Dolff?”
There was a pause, which even to the unsuspecting ladies had something dreadful in it. Dolff cleared his throat and moistened his parched lips.
“You can have him—if you wish it, I suppose?” he said.
The crisis, however, passed off for the moment in an unexpected way—for Meredith’s strength suddenly forsook him, and he had to be taken back to his room in something very like a faint.
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
Remembering is a very slow progress when your mind is confused by serious illness, weakness, and the breaking off for a time of all threads of meaning in the mind. Meredith took it up again in the morning, though not with the momentary gleam of conviction which had flashed upon him; and he worked very hard at it, as he might have worked at a case in his practice for the Bar or a mathematical problem. But it was harder than either of those. He made out easily enough his meeting with Janet at Mimpriss’s, and guessed rather than remembered that he had walked home with her, and thus exposed himself to being knocked down at Mrs. Harwood’s door; but he did not make out until he had returned to the question—his faculties freshened by a night’s sleep, and the new energy of the morning—why it was that he had met Janet, or that there was any special reason for their meeting. It flashed upon him all at once that he had made the appointment; that he had written to her to ask her to meet him; and then he remembered all at once the papers and the mystery which the papers had thrown so little light upon. He half started from his couch with excitement when it burst upon him that he was under the same roof as the mysterious recluse in the wing: and thus laid himself open to a grave reproof from his attendant, who called upon him to recollect that he had been very ill, that his escape was half-miraculous, and that to put his health in jeopardy by suffering himself to get excited would be “more than criminal.” He believed that she meant scarcely less than criminal, but he was humble, and expressed the deepest penitence.