“Come down, doc, and let me in!” he cried, and in response I soon unchained the front door and was wringing his hand.
Walking before me he ascended the stairs and not until he had come into the light of my room did I notice the change wrought in him.
“Good heavens, my dear fellow! Wherever have you been?” I cried, glaring at him in surprise, for his clothes seemed half torn from his back, his face dirty with a stubbly beard, as though he had not shaved for a week, while his trousers were caked with mud and his white face bore a nasty cut only half healed. It extended almost from the eye to the chin, and with the blood still caked there, gave him a hideous and forbidding appearance.
“Ah!” he gasped, throwing himself into an arm-chair, “you may well ask. I’ve had a splendid time of it. Have you got a drop of brandy or anything by you? I feel faint.”
He looked it, and I rushed to my cupboard and got out a bottle of Martell and a siphon of soda.
I allowed him to take a long steady drink before questioning him, in the meantime noting the terrible gash on his face. I saw also that his left hand had been cut on the inside.
“Well,” I said, “we’ve all been most anxious about you, fearing something bad had happened. Tell me all about it.”
“Anxious?” he laughed. “Not more anxious than I’ve been about myself, I can tell you. As for what happened, well I must collect my thoughts in order to tell you how it all began and what was the ultimate result. But before I begin I may as well give you my own opinion, and that is, I don’t believe that we shall ever find that treasure.”
“Why not?”
“Because the others know far more about it than we do,” was his reply. “When I resolved to take a share in the investigation I never dreamed that the game could be such a desperate one as it is. By Jove! those fellows would murder both of us without the least compunction. We must go armed in future.”