On board the Miltiades, which he had joined at Naples, he had displayed no outward sign of wealth—or that he possessed money to burn. Indeed, his dress was mean and shabby, and by the wardrobe contained in his two ragged bags, one would certainly never put him down as a man of means. It is generally dangerous, however, to judge a man by his clothes.
The old clock of St. Clement Danes struck eight, and a few moments later there came a low tap at the door, and the doctor again reappeared, and bent over his patient anxiously.
He gave him a few more drops of the medicine, but the old man made an impatient gesture, and refused to swallow more.
What request, I wondered, was contained in that crumpled and rather bulky letter which I held in my breast-pocket?
Outside, in the corridor, the doctor told me that the end was quite near, and suggested that I should obtain something from him concerning his friends.
“Mr Arnold has already told me,” I replied. “He possesses no friends.”
And at that the doctor shrugged his shoulders and descended the stairs.
Back at the bedside in the fast-fading light of the hot day of early June, I took the old man’s bony hand in silent farewell.
He turned his eyes upon me, gazing at me with a strange intense look, as though trying to read my very soul.
He endeavoured to speak, but though I bent my ear to his mouth, I could catch no words. His thin nervous hands clenched themselves, his grey beard moved, and he struggled violently to communicate with me, but without avail. Then with his right hand, he made a sign that he wished to write.