“Why not combine business with pleasure?” I suggested. “There’s good fishing at Invermalluch, gorgeous scenery, a golf-course a mile or two away, and you can do just as you please on the General’s estate. He’ll be delighted.”
“Are you sure?” he asked. “Well, anyway, I can go to the Glenelg Hotel and fish up Glenmore. Now, Mr. Ewart, we will catch the afternoon train, the earliest there is—though I suppose there’s only one.”
“I can’t tell you how grateful I am, Mr. Garnesk,” I said. “It may mean a very great deal to us that you are so anxious to see Miss McLeod.”
“I am not anxious to see Miss McLeod,” he answered, cryptically. “I’m anxious to see the dog.”
I left him, to telegraph to the General that I was arriving that night bringing the specialist with me; and I need hardly say that I left the telegraph office with a comparatively light heart. The journey to Mallaig was one of the most interesting afternoons I have spent. Garnesk was consulting oculist to all the big chemical, machine, naval and other manufacturers in the great industrial centre on the Clyde, and he kept me enthralled with his accounts of the sudden attacks of various eye diseases which were occasionally the fate of the workers. The effects of chemicals, the indigenous generation of gases in the furnace-rooms, and so on, had afforded him ample scope for experiment; and, fortunately for us all, he was delighted to have found new ground for enlarging his experience. The mixture of professional anecdote and piscatorial prophecy with which he entertained me, now and then rushing across the carriage to get a glimpse of a salmon-pool in some river over which we happened to be passing, gave me an amusing insight into the character of one whom I have since learned to regard as a very brilliant and charming man. When we arrived at the landing-stage at the Lodge, the General greeted him with undisguised joy.
“Begad! Mr. Garnesk,” he blurted, “I’m thundering glad to see you, sir. It’s good of you to come, sir—extremely good.”
“That remains to be seen, General,” said Garnesk, solemnly—“whether my visit will do any good. I hope so, with all my heart.”
“Amen to that!” said the old man, pathetically, with a heavy sigh.
“How is Miss McLeod?” asked the scientist.