"Why do you think he did it?" asked Horn.
The doctor shrugged his shoulders. In a little while native police came along, under the charge of a marine, with a stretcher, and immediately afterwards a couple of naval officers and a naval doctor. They managed everything in a businesslike manner.
"What about the wife?" said one of the officers.
"Now that you've come I'll go back to the house and get some things on. I'll see that it's broken to her. She'd better not see him till he's been fixed up a little."
"I guess that's right," said the naval doctor.
When Dr Macphail went back he found his wife nearly dressed.
"Mrs Davidson's in a dreadful state about her husband," she said to him as soon as he appeared. "He hasn't been to bed all night. She heard him leave Miss Thompson's room at two, but he went out. If he's been walking about since then he'll be absolutely dead."
Dr Macphail told her what had happened and asked her to break the news to Mrs Davidson.
"But why did he do it?" she asked, horror-stricken.
"I don't know."