“My dear chap,” said my companion, cutting me short with a laugh, “it is just because I do realise that my presence here may be dangerous to Miss McLeod that I propose to leave.”
“Dangerous to her?” I gasped. “What on earth do you mean now?” The whole world seemed to have taken leave of its senses, and I mentally vowed that I should wire for Dennis first thing in the morning.
“I say that because her dog has been drugged and taken away.”
“But some fool of a poacher was responsible for that!” I cried.
My companion looked at me thoughtfully as he puffed at his pipe.
“I was the cause of the dog’s disappearance,” he said quietly.
“I see what you’re driving at,” I said. “You pretended to steal the dog because you were afraid Myra would make overwhelming objections to your vivisecting him, or whatever you want to do. Of course, now I see you would be the only person about Invermalluch Lodge likely to have chloroform. But even then I don’t see what you mean by saying that your presence here would be dangerous to Miss McLeod.”
“That’s a very ingenious construction to put on my words, my dear fellow,” he said; “but in my mind I was relying on you to overcome my patient’s objections to any experiments that might be deemed advisable on her dog. I meant something much more serious than that. I have known you only a few hours, Mr. Ewart; but nobody need tell me you are anything of a fool, unless he wants a very flat contradiction. You are looking at this affair from a personal point of view—and no wonder, either. But if you were not so worried about your fiancée your brain would have grasped my point at once. That is why I want you to send for a friend.”
“I will,” I promised solemnly. “Now tell me—what did you mean?”
“When I said I was the cause of the dog’s disappearance, I meant that if I hadn’t arrived on the scene the dog would never have been touched. The dog was taken by someone who knew he was blind, who knew that I would experiment on him, and who was determined to get there first.”