Only one person happened to be in that bar at the time—a little man, seated in a corner, half asleep, with a glass of spirits beside him. The Captain, entering hurriedly with his burden, looked round, and cried out—“Give me some brandy—quick! an’ tell me w’ere I can find a doctor.”
At the mention of that last word, the little man in the corner staggered to his feet; swayed uneasily for a moment; and then came towards the Captain, with what dignity he could muster on such short notice. But his eyes no sooner fell upon the Captain, and then upon the girl, than he uttered a sort of cry—spun completely round like an unsteady top—and made for the door. But the Captain had recognised him, too; and caught him just as he was slipping out.
“’Ere ’old ’ard, mess-mate—’old ’ard,” exclaimed the Captain, who had deposited his burden on a bench and was able to give, for the moment, his undivided attention to his captive. “You’re a man as I wants to see, in ’arf a shake, so soon as I’ve attended to this ’ere young lady. An’ per’aps, as there don’t seem to be nobody else ’andy—p’raps you can tell me w’ere I’ll find a doctor?”
The little man—no other than Dr. Cripps—was cowed by the superior size and strength of the Captain and capitulated. “I—I am a doctor,” he said, giving himself a sort of shake, probably with the object of pulling himself together—and bending over Madge, who had begun to open her eyes, and to look about her. “Ah—nothing more than a temporary faintness, as I imagined.”
He turned round suddenly, and went to the bar, and hammered on it with his fists, and shouted out in a voice sufficient to be heard at the other end of the house. “Hi—hi—why the devil don’t you look after business, all of you! Here’s brandy wanted—and all sorts of things—and yet any one might die, and be buried forty times over, before you’d turn a hair. Hi—hi—where are you all?”
A surly-looking man came slowly out of an inner room, and advanced to the bar. “All right—all right—you needn’t shout the ’ouse down, Dr. Cripps,” he said, stooping to get what was wanted, and glancing carelessly at the girl as he did so.
But it happened that the brandy was not required; for the mere mention of the name of Cripps was sufficient to rouse Madge, as nothing else could have done. She sprang up at once, and caught the little man by the shoulders, and looked into his eyes. Cripps, for his part, began to shake and to tremble very much; for he remembered the fifty pounds she had paid him, and wondered whether or not she wanted it back.
“Are you Dr. Cripps?” she asked, staring at him intently. “Yes—I see you are. What Providence has sent you to me at this time!”
“Madam,” said the Doctor, feebly, “if it would be any use for me to deny my own identity I would most willingly do so. I have been hunted and badgered to an extent beyond all belief; I have been dragged about in the dead of night—sworn at—carried miles on hay waggons, without a chance of obtaining natural and necessary refreshments; and all because my name happens to be Cripps. But I give in, Madam; I am vanquished; do what you will with me—but let me finish my liquor.” He walked across to where his glass stood, and drained it, and then looked expressively at the Captain. But nothing came of that; and at last beginning dimly to see, in the coming of these two people—each connected, in such a different fashion, with his recollections of Dandy Chater—something which he had to face, whispered the landlord over the bar for a moment, and then turned again to them.
“If you want me—if you have anything private to say,” he said—“you had better come upstairs; there is a room there, of which I can claim the use.”