From King’s Cross to Guy’s is a considerable distance, and when I alighted from the cab in the courtyard of the hospital it was nearly mid-day. Until two o’clock I was kept busy in the wards, and after a sandwich and a glass of sherry I drove to Harley Street, where I found Sir Bernard in his consulting-room for the first time for a month.
“Ah! Boyd,” he cried merrily, when I entered. “Thought I’d surprise you to-day. I felt quite well this morning, so resolved to come up and see Lady Twickenham and one or two others. I’m not at home to patients, and have left them to you.”
“Delighted to see you better,” I declared, wringing his hand. “They were asking after you at the hospital to-day. Vernon said he intended going down to see you to-morrow.”
“Kind of him,” the old man laughed, placing his thin hands together, after rubbing and readjusting his glasses. “You were away last night; out of town, they said.”
“Yes, I wanted a breath of fresh air,” I answered, laughing. I did not care to tell him where I had been, knowing that he held my love for Ethelwynn as the possible ruin of my career.
His curiosity seemed aroused; but, although he put to me an ingenious question, I steadfastly refused to satisfy him. I recollected too well his open condemnation of my love on previous occasions. Now that the “murdered” man was proved to be still alive, I surely had no further grounds for my suspicion of Ethelwynn. That she had, by her silence, deceived me regarding her engagement to Mr. Courtenay was plain, but the theory that it was her hand that had assassinated him was certainly disproved. Thus, although the discovery of the “dead” man’s continued existence deepened the mystery a thousandfold, it nevertheless dispelled from my heart a good deal of the suspicion regarding my well-beloved; and, in consequence, I was not desirous that any further hostile word should be uttered against her.
While Sir Bernard went out to visit her ladyship and two or three other nervous women living in the same neighbourhood, I seated myself in his chair and saw the afternoon callers one after another. I fear that the advice I gave during those couple of hours was not very notable for its shrewdness or brilliancy. As in other professions, so in medicine, when one’s brain is overflowing with private affairs, one cannot attend properly to patients. On such occasions one is apt to ask the usual questions mechanically, hear the replies and scribble a prescription of some harmless formula. On the afternoon in question I certainly believe myself guilty of such lapse of professional attention. Yet even we doctors are human, although our patients frequently forget that fact. The medico is a long-suffering person, even in these days of scarcity of properly-qualified men—the first person called on emergency, and the very last to be paid!
It was past five o’clock before I was able to return to my rooms, and on arrival I found upon my table a note from Jevons. It was dated from the Yorick Club, a small but exceedingly comfortable Bohemian centre in Bedford Street, Covent Garden, and had evidently been written hurriedly on the previous night:—
“I hear you are absent in the country. That is unfortunate. But as soon as you receive this, lose no time in calling at the Hennikers’ and making casual inquiries regarding Miss Mivart. Something has happened, but what it is I have failed to discover. You stand a better chance. Go at once. I must leave for Bath to-night. Address me at the Royal Hotel, G. W. Station.
“Ambler Jevons.”