"And it's not the first since you've been here either. You see I'm perfectly frank with you, Mr. Merton. If you like to give me away to Philip--well be d----d, you can if you like. But you'll surely not? I've told you what I've told to no one else."
There rushed into my mind confirmation enough of part at least of the poor devil's story. His curious moods, his manner as he entered the room this evening, O'Brien's impish allusions to liquor when I first visited the house, all fell into their places now. Yet utterly as this had exploded my hopes, I think I was more glad than sorry to see the doctor come out of the ordeal with only this kind of stain on his character. He was a likeable man, we had been capital friends--and he was Jean's cousin.
"I promise you, doctor," I said, "that I shall repeat no word of this story--except of course in confidence to those who are on the track of this business in Ransay. Only in return you must tell me absolutely frankly if you have seen any grounds for suspecting O'Brien of anything treasonable--anything whatever."
"The only plotting the man was capable of was to get liquor. Otherwise he was just a gas bag. I've seen him too often in a state when he'd have given everything away, if there had been anything to give."
"But this entry!" I cried. "How do you explain that?"
The doctor looked at it again and his bewilderment was obviously sincere.
"I'm frankly d----d if I can make head or tail of it," he said. "Bolton must have got on the wrong scent; that's the only thing I can imagine."
And then, like a sharp smack in the face, Jean's reading of that entry came back to me. Could she have guessed right after all? It looked uncommonly like it.
"And yet," I said to myself, "it's a great thing to have tested the other hypothesis."
In fact, if one is not built to be easily dispirited, well, it is not easy to dispirit one. I looked at the doctor, and something in my expression seemed to make him smile. When he smiled he looked so pleasant that my conscience smote me. I told myself he certainly deserved some reparation for the ordeal I had put him through.
"Doctor," I said, "I am devilish thirsty myself after this bout. Let's each have a whisky and soda!"