"I'll tell you in a moment, sir."
The earth-stained khâki jacket was torn down the left side and drenched with ominous red. A little pool of the same colour had gathered under the sufferer.
"He looks gassly, don't him?" muttered one of the Town Guardsmen, the Swiss baker who was not Swiss.
"Makes plenty of noise," said the County Court clerk hypercritically, "for a dying man."
"Oh Lord! oh Lord!"
The subject had bellowed with sonority, testifying at least to the possession of an uninjured diaphragm, as Saxham begun to cut away the jacket.
"Oh, come now!" said a brisk, pleasant, incisive voice that sent an electric shock volting through the presumably shattered frame. "That's not so bad!"
"I told you so," muttered the County Court clerk to the Swiss baker.
"You remember me, Colonel?"
Haggard, despairing eyes rolled up at the Chief appealingly. He had met the gaze of those oyster-orbs before. He recognised Alderman Brooker, proprietor of the grocery stores in Market Square, victim of the outrage perpetrated on a sentry near the Convent on a certain memorable night in October last.