“For a few seconds he stood there facing me, then he grinned as he had done at the beginning of the interview.
“‘All right, Doctor,’ he cried. ‘I’ll go, and Sir John shall drive the nail right in.’
“‘I’m sorry,’ I said—‘infernally sorry. You’ve taken it, if I may say so, like a very brave man.’
“He turned away abruptly. ‘What the deuce is the good of whining?’ he cried. ‘If it’s the same as in my mother’s case, the end will be very abrupt.’
“The next moment he was gone—a man under sentence of death. And the pitiful tragedy of it hit one like a blow. He was so essentially the type of man who should have married some charming girl and have children. He was just a first-class specimen of the sporting Englishman, but——” The Doctor paused and looked at the Soldier. “The type that makes a first-class squadron-leader,” and the Soldier nodded.
“It was in the afternoon,” continued the Doctor after a while, “that Sir John Longworth rang me up. Digby had been to him, and the result was as I expected. Two years, or possibly two days, and as for marriage, out of the question entirely. He had merely confirmed my own diagnosis of the case, and there for a time the matter rested. In the stress of work Jack Digby passed from my mind, until Fate decreed that we should meet again in what were to prove most dramatic circumstances.
“It was two months later—about the beginning of July—that I decided to take a short holiday. I couldn’t really spare the time, but I knew that I ought to take one. So I ran down for a long week-end to stop with some people I knew fairly well in Dorsetshire. They had just taken a big house a few miles from Weymouth, and I will call them the Maitlands. There were Mr. and Mrs. Maitland, and a son, Tom, up at the ’Varsity, and a daughter, Sybil. When I arrived I found they had a bit of a house-party, perhaps a dozen in all, and after tea the girl, whom I’d met once or twice before, took me round the place.
“She was a charming girl, very, very pretty, of about twenty-two or three, and we chattered on aimlessly as we strolled through the gardens.
“‘You’re quite a big party,’ I laughed, ‘and I thought I was coming for a quiet week-end.’
“‘We’ve got two or three more arriving to-night,’ she said. ‘At least I think so. One of them is a most elusive person.’ She was staring straight in front of her as she spoke, and for the moment she seemed to have forgotten my existence.