When Sir Richard Mortmain next opened his eyes after his fall he found himself in his bedchamber. The curtains were tightly drawn, allowing only a shimmer of sunshine to creep in and play upon the ceiling; an unknown woman in a nurse's uniform was sitting motionless at the foot of his bed; the air was heavy with the pungent odor of iodoform, and his right arm, tightly bandaged and lying extended upon a wooden support before him, throbbed with burning pains. Too weak to move, unable to recall what had brought him to such a pass, he raised his eyebrows inquiringly, and in reply the nurse laid her finger upon her lips and reaching toward a stand beside the bed held a tumbler containing a glass tube to the baronet's lips. Mortmain sucked the contents from the tumbler and felt his pulse strengthen—then weakness manifested itself and he sank back, his lips framing the unspoken question, "What has happened?"
The nurse smiled—she was a pretty, plump young person—not the kind Sir Richard favored (Burne-Jones was his type), and whispered:
"You have been unconscious over twelve hours. You must lie still. You have had a bad fall and your hand is injured."
In some strange and unaccountable way the statement called to Mortmain's fuddled senses a confused recollection of a scene in Hauptmann's "Die Versunkene Glöcke," and half unconsciously he repeated the words:
"I fell. I—fe—l—l!"
"Yes, you did, indeed!" retorted the pretty nurse. "But Sir Penniston will never forgive me if I let you talk. How is your arm?"
"It burns—and burns!" answered the baronet.
"That horrid vase crushed right through the palm. Rather a nasty wound. But you will be all right presently. Do you wish anything?"
Suddenly complete mental capacity rushed back to him. The disagreeable scene with Flaggs, the finding of the notes, the news of Russell's murder, and his accident. The murder! He must learn the details. And the notes. What had he done with them? He could not recollect, try hard as he would. Were they on the table? His head whirled and he grew suddenly faint. The nurse poured out another tumbler from a bottle and again held the tube to his lips. How delicious and strengthening it was!
"Please get me a newspaper!" said Sir Richard.
"A newspaper!" cried the nurse. "Nonsense! I'll do no such thing!"
"Then please see if there are some papers in an envelope lying on the writing table in my private study."
The nurse seemed puzzled. Where aristocratic patients were concerned, particularly if they were in a weakened condition, she was accustomed to accommodate them. She hesitated.
"At once!" added Sir Richard.
The nurse tiptoed out of the room, and in the course of a few moments returned.
"The butler says that Mr. Flynt's clerk, a man named Faggs, or Flaggs, or something of the sort, came back for them half an hour ago. He explained that he thought Mr. Flynt might have left some papers by mistake, and the butler supposed it was all right and let him have them. The name of your solicitors was upon the envelope."
Sir Richard stared at her stupidly. A queer feeling of horror and distrust pervaded him, the very same feeling which his first sight of the clerk had inspired in him. What could Flaggs have known of the notes? The clerk himself could not have committed the ghastly deed, since he had been under arrest at the time—but might he not have been an accomplice? Were the notes part of some terrible plot to enmesh him, Sir Richard Mortmain, in the murder? Was it a scheme of blackmail? The blood surged to his head and dimmed his eyesight. But why had Flaggs taken them away? Had he left them on the street hoping that Sir Richard would find them and bring them into the house, so that he could testify to having found them in the study? But, if so, why had he risked the possibility of their having been destroyed before he could regain them? Such a supposition was most unlikely. It must have been merely chance. The fellow had probably sneaked in simply to see what he could find. And what had he found! A shiver of terror quenched for an instant the burning of Mortmain's body. A horrible vision of himself standing outside the window of Lord Gordon Russell took shape before him. What if people should say—! He had been heard by Joyce and the clerk to express his hatred of the old man and his willingness to kill him. In addition there were the notes, overdue and about to be protested, which Flaggs had found in his study within twelve hours of Lord Russell's murder. Motive enough for any crime. Moreover, the policeman had seen him loitering there at almost the exact moment of the homicide!
These momentous facts came crashing down upon his brain with the weight of stones, numbing for an instant his exquisite torture—then reason reasserted herself. Lord Russell was dead. If circumstances seemed to point in his direction, he had only to deny that the notes had been in his possession, and certainly his word would be taken as against that of the drunken clerk of a solicitor. Moreover, the notes were obviously not in the possession of the executors. Should, by any chance, no memoranda of them remain he might never be called upon to honor them. At all events, his bankruptcy had, for the time at least, been averted. Even were their existence known, legal procedure would intervene to give him time to evolve some means of escape—perhaps, in default of aught else, a marriage of convenience. Sir Richard, in spite of the burning pain in his right arm, leaned back his head with a sensation of relief.
A soft knock came at the door and he heard the nurse's voice murmuring in low tones; then the curtain was partially raised and he recognized the figures of Sir Penniston Crisp and his young assistant.
"Ah, my dear Mortmain! When you left me yesterday morning I hardly expected to see you so soon again. And how do you find yourself?" was the baronet's cheery salutation.
Sir Richard smiled faintly.
"Rather a nasty wound," continued the surgeon. "Fickles, hand me those bandage scissors. Well, we must take a look at it." And he seated himself comfortably by the bedside.
Miss Fickles, who had elevated Sir Richard to a sitting posture, now handed Sir Penniston the scissors, and the great physician leisurely cut the bandage from the arm. Mortmain winced with pain and closed his eyes. For an instant the outer air soothed the burning palm and forearm, then the blood crept into the veins and the pain became veritable agony.
"Hm!" remarked Sir Penniston. "I must open this up. It needs attending to."
He might well say so, for the edges of the wound showed tinges of yellow, and the hand itself was torn pitifully.
"Scalscope, pass those instruments to Miss Fickles, and open that bottle of somni-chloride. I shall have to give you a whiff of anæsthetic, Mortmain. These little exploring expeditions are apt to be painful, however gentle we try to be. Just enough to make you a mere spectator—you will not lose consciousness. Wonderful, isn't it? I'm afraid I shall have to pick out some slivers of bone and trim off the edges a little. It will only take a moment or two. Then a nice bandage and you will be quite at ease."
While Jermyn was emptying Sir Penniston's bag of its heterogeneous contents, Miss Fickles boiled the surgeon's implements in a tray of water over a tiny electric stove, and then arranged them in order upon a soft bed of padded cotton. Scalscope pulled a table to the bedside, and laid out with military precision rolls of linen, absorbents, antiseptic gauze, scissors, tape, thread, needles, and finally the little bottle of somni-chloride. The nurse lowered Sir Richard back upon the pillow and quickly twisted a fresh towel into a cone.
