“All right, sir. I’ll see ’im when I go off duty, and tell ’im what you say.”
Then the nurse shook a warning finger at me, and gave me a draught, after which I fell again into a kind of dreamy stupor.
It was evening when I awoke, and I found a grey-bearded inspector at my bedside.
“Well?” he said gruffly. “You want to see me—to say something? What is it?”
“I want to tell you the truth,” I said.
“Oh! yes, you all want to do that. You go and make a fool of yourself, and then try and get out of it without going before the magistrate,” was his reply.
“I have not made a fool of myself,” I declared. “A deliberate attempt was made upon my life by an American named George Himes, who had a flat at Hyde Park Gate. I never went into Kensington Gardens. I must have been taken there.”
“Oh!” he exclaimed, rather dubiously. “Do you know what you’re saying? Just tell me your story again.”
I repeated it word for word, adding that I dined at the American’s flat with my friend James Harding Miller and his daughter, who were staying at the Buckingham Palace Hotel.
“I want to see Miss Miller. Will you send word to her that I am here?”