Mr Armstrong hurriedly scrawled two notes.
“Take a cab, and leave this note at — Hospital. Let the nurse I have asked for come back in the cab at once. Then go on with this note to Sir William Dove, and bring word from him the earliest moment he can be here. Don’t lose an instant.”
“Captain Oliphant,” said he, as soon as the messenger had gone, “three is too many for this room. I am here to relieve guard. You need rest. Dr Brandram will be here any moment. Bring him up directly he comes.”
Captain Oliphant was certainly deserving of a little sympathy. He had borne the burden and heat of the day, and now another was entering into his labour. But the tutor’s tone had an ugly ring about it, which, for the moment, cowed the injured gentleman, and constrained him, after glowering for a moment or two, and trying to articulate a protest, meekly to withdraw.
“My responsibility ends where yours begins,” said he, with his best sneer. “I grudge none of the trouble I have taken for the dear boy, but I must decline to remain here as the assistant of Signor Francisco the music-hall cad.”
“I can imagine it might be painful,” said Mr Armstrong drily; “but the immediate thing to be desired is that you should not consume the oxygen in this room. Explanations will do later.”
Captain Oliphant was not at hand that evening to meet the doctors. A business engagement had summoned him to Maxfield, where he rejoiced the hearts of his two children by a sudden arrival at breakfast-time.
A curt note from Armstrong the same afternoon apprised him that his movements had been anticipated.
“Doctors not without hope. Admirable nurse secured. Brandram and I remain here.”
Captain Oliphant derived scant consolation from this announcement, and quite forgot his business engagement in his mortification and ill temper. He dropped in during the day to see Mr Pottinger, to discuss his grievance with that legal luminary. But Mr Pottinger, as the reader is aware, had complications of another kind to disclose. He astonished his visitor with an account of the surprise visit of Mr Ratman a few days previously, and of that gentleman’s astounding claims to the name of Ingleton.