"of course! Naturally, I asked him."
"Well – "
"You are curious, Andrews, aren't you?"
"Oh, if there's any secret about it – why, I – "
Mayhan laughed irritatingly; so irritatingly that his questioner was tempted to silence him with his fist.
"No secret at all," the surgeon said, starting off. "It happened – purely by accident."
Then young Andrews, nettled and thoroughly uncomfortable, hastened back to Nina with his scant news. The name "Scripps" meant nothing to her.
But Mayhan, meanwhile, dropping into the club, exploded a bombshell. He found Colonel Darling alone and brooding in his chosen corner, a tall glass of Scotch and soda at his right hand.
"I say, colonel," he blurted, "just came from a chap who says he knows you – or did. Name of Nibbetts."
Darling started so violently that his arm struck the table, jarred it, and sent over the whisky glass, splashing.
For a moment his face flamed and the veins in his neck swelled to the danger point. He gripped the chair-arms, and his throat emitted an inarticulate gurgle.
The next minute he relaxed suddenly, pale as paper.
CHAPTER V
The Question of the Dead Alive
Colonel Darling's courage had never been questioned. But physical courage is one thing and moral courage is another – very much another; and it was physical courage in which Darling was strong.
It was beyond question that he could face overwhelming odds in the field without "batting an eye-lash," as the saying goes. He had proved that time and time again. Yet from unhappy wedlock he had fled like a craven wolf and sought surcease in the bottle.
This should have spoken his type of weakness for all to hear. But his fellow officers were deaf to the truth, forbearing to view the situation from the only right and real standpoint, though the condition was undeniably plain.
For the tidings brought by Mayhan the colonel was not in the least prepared. Again moral courage was demanded, and again he exhibited the white feather. To Mayhan's faith in his commanding officer the exhibition was an astonishing setback. Darling had been bowled over by a mere name.
Others, too, had heard and witnessed with much the same amazement. It was very clear to them all that Colonel Darling had been thrown into a white funk by the mere mention of the odd word "Nibbetts."
They could get it from no other angle, and they could reconcile it with nothing they knew of their man. In view of subsequent events, their attitude at this moment is important.
Darling was quite five minutes in pulling himself together. Then he caught the doubt in Mayhan's eyes, and his first impulse was to explain – or try to. But on second thought, realizing that there was nothing for him to say, he ordered whisky and soda and held his peace. And no man asked a question.
The clock pointed to five to eleven. At ten past Colonel Darling left the club and walked to the hotel, which was less than a quarter of a mile away. But there his cowardice caught him again, and he paused at the gate of the compound.
The broad, shaded roadway was deserted, so that what followed went unobserved. Back and forth, torn by indecision, he irritably and fearsomely paced. For the uplift of his flagging, flaccid will he seemed likely to require either the Archimedean lever or the Archimedean screw.
Fifteen awful minutes dragged torturously by before, in sheer desperation, he entered the hotel and faced the clerk in charge, his card in his hand.
"Send that to the Visc – " he began, only to pull himself up with a sharp jolt.
The clerk in charge, not overburdened with wits, failed to catch the significance of the abbreviation. He only stared and waited.
"Send that to Mr. Mayhan's patient," corrected the colonel, the sweat beading on brow and chin, and turned to pace the floor as he had paced the roadway.
The wait, though seemingly interminable, ended too quickly for his wish, and his rap on the door of Mr. Scripps's room was hesitant and feeble.
There came in answer an inarticulate rumble, and an instant later across ten yards of floor space he gazed on the confronting Nibbetts, and paused, speechless. But the confronting Nibbetts – the nickname by which the Viscount Kneedrock had been best known to relatives and close friends – was eminently more composed.
"I am indeed deeply honored," he said and bowed stiffly. The irony of his tone was withering.
Darling, fighting himself for words, advanced a step or two. Then: "I should never have known you," he ventured unfortunately.
The other laughed with a hoarse, grim bitterness.
"No?" he queried. "How odd!" And his caller colored to his eyebrows.
"Would you care to sit down?" the viscount continued, pushing a chair forward with his uninjured right hand. The left, bandaged, was supported by a sling. "It may help you to some self-possession."
But Colonel Darling, irritated, shook his head.
"I sha'n't detain you," he said. "But – I – you see – you see, I had to make sure. I should never have believed, otherwise."
"You're quite sure you believe now?"
"Quite. Still, I can't understand. I would have sworn – "
"You did swear," Kneedrock interrupted. "That was the devil of it."
The colonel's lip twitched under his mustache.
"I never had a doubt," he averred. "I – I am unspeakably sorry."
"Much good that does. Still, it's no end decent that you should say so. Yet, on the whole, I fancy you got rather the worst of it. Will you sit down to oblige me? I've something I'd like to say to you."
Jack Darling, wretched as never before in his wretched life, slid limply into the chair that waited.
"Can't I offer you something?" asked Kneedrock, his hand on the bell.
In spite of his pride and because of his misery the colonel accepted.
Certainly the viscount's was the more commanding presence. He seemed to have taken the situation in hand at once. Darling was still the reverse of composed. His eyelids twitched and his lips quivered.
The two men were nearly of an age. If there was any advantage here it, too, was on the side of Kneedrock, who had just turned forty-four. But in general appearance the colonel contrasted strongly for the better.
He was especially well groomed, whereas Nibbetts was at once leonine, rugged, and nearly shabby. His tawny hair and beard were ragged and uncared for. He gave the impression of having been out of the world in which such things mattered. And this was true.
Having dispensed his hospitality, he reverted to his sneer. He was still standing when he said:
"I assume Mrs. Darling never showed you my letter of six years ago."
His voice aroused the officer,
