“There are a good many will leave the service for this!” Vaughan replied; and he saw on the instant that the shot told. Flixton’s face fell, he opened his mouth to reply. But disdaining to listen to excuses, of which the speaker’s manner betrayed the shallowness, Vaughan opened the bedroom door and passed in.
To his boundless astonishment Brereton was really in bed, with a light beside him. Asleep he probably was not, for he rose at once to a sitting posture and, with wild and dishevelled hair, confronted the intruder with a mingling of wrath and discomfiture in his looks. His sword and an undress cap, blue with a silver band, lay beside the candle on the table, and Vaughan saw that though in his shirt-sleeves he was not otherwise undressed.
“Mr. Vaughan!” he cried. “What, if you please, does this mean?”
“That is what I am here to ask you!” Vaughan answered, his face flushed with indignation. He was too angry to pick his words. “Are you, can you be aware, sir, what is done while you sleep?”
“Sleep?” Brereton rejoined, with a sombre gleam in his eyes. “Sleep, man? God knows it is the last thing I do!” He clapped his hand to his brow and for a moment remained silent, holding it there. Then, “Sleep has been a stranger to me these three nights!” he said.
“Then what do you do here?” Vaughan answered, in astonishment. And looked round the room as if he might find his answer there.
“Ah!” Brereton rejoined, with a look half suspicious, half cunning. “That is another matter. But never mind! Never mind! I know what I am doing.”
“Know——”
“Yes, well!” the soldier replied, bringing his feet to the floor, but continuing to keep his seat on the bed. “Very well, sir, I assure you.”
Vaughan looked aghast at him. “But, Colonel Brereton,” he rejoined, “do you consider that you are the only person in this city able to act? That without you nothing can be done and nothing can be ventured?”