“Just as you please. Of course, as you say you were at Bolsover School with Forrester, and were the cause of his accident, it is hardly worth while making a mystery of it.”
“I forgot that. My name is John Jeffreys.”
“Thank you. It is a very proper thing of you to offer to assist us in our search, and I shall be glad if in the end you should become entitled to the reward which has been offered.”
“I would not touch a farthing of it,” said Jeffreys, with a scorn that astonished the lawyer.
“Well, that’s your affair. I can understand you have some remorse for what has occurred, and would be glad to help, reward or no reward.”
“I would give my life to find young Forrester. Has anything been heard of him?”
“Not much, though we have been able to trace him rather farther than you did. We found a day or two ago a mention of the case of a lad suffering from the results of an accident such as he appears to have met with in one of the medical papers at the time. The case was reported as having been treated at Middlesex Hospital, and I find on inquiry there that in the December of that year Gerard Forrester was a patient under treatment for some months, and in the May following was discharged as incurable. That, you see, was more than eighteen months ago.”
Jeffreys felt his heart thump excitedly as he listened. It was little enough, but it seemed at least to bring him six months nearer to the object of his search.
“After that,” said Mr Wilkins, “we are unable to discover anything. The address entered against his name in the hospital books, which was probably that of his old nurse, cannot now be found, as the street has been pulled down a year ago, and no one recollects him. I saw the surgeon at the hospital, who remembered the case, and he explained to me that the boy when he left there might have lived a month or twenty years. In any case he would always have to lie on his back. It would be possible, he said, for him to use his hands—indeed, he believed during the last week or two of his stay in the hospital he had amused himself with drawing.”
“He was considered good at drawing at Bolsover,” put in Jeffreys.