‘Oh,’ says the major, ‘the man fell in a duel, and by your hand! I am not an infant.’
‘By no means,’ said I. ‘But you seem to me to be a good deal of a theorist.’
‘Shall we test it?’ he asked. ‘The doctor is close by. If there is not an open wound on your shoulder, I am wrong. If there is—’ He waved his hand. ‘But I advise you to think twice. There is a deuce of a nasty drawback to the experiment—that what might have remained private between us two becomes public property.’
‘Oh, well!’ said I, with a laugh, ‘anything rather than a doctor! I cannot bear the breed.’
His last words had a good deal relieved me, but I was still far from comfortable.
Major Chevenix smoked awhile, looking now at his cigar ash, now at me. ‘I’m a soldier myself,’ he says presently, ‘and I’ve been out in my time and hit my man. I don’t want to run any one into a corner for an affair that was at all necessary or correct. At the same time, I want to know that much, and I’ll take your word of honour for it. Otherwise, I shall be very sorry, but the doctor must be called in.’
‘I neither admit anything nor deny anything,’ I returned. ‘But if this form of words will suffice you, here is what I say: I give you my parole, as a gentleman and a soldier, there has nothing taken place amongst us prisoners that was not honourable as the day.’
‘All right,’ says he. ‘That was all I wanted. You can go now, Champdivers.’
And as I was going out he added, with a laugh: ‘By the bye, I ought to apologise: I had no idea I was applying the torture!’
The same afternoon the doctor came into the courtyard with a piece of paper in his hand. He seemed hot and angry, and had certainly no mind to be polite.