“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.”
“O, 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 a while, 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.