was a footstep on the stairs. The door opened, and Dr. Birnie walked in.
At sight of him the dog dropped his tail, and, growling, slunk back into the corner of the room, with his eyes steadily fixed on the doctor, half in dislike, half in fear.
‘Why don’t you teach that brute not to growl at me, Heckett?’ said Dr. Birnie, seizing a rabbit-hutch by the bedside, and sitting on it, much to the terror of the occupant.
‘It’s his natur,’ the man answered. ‘He don’t like you; he’s a very good judge, is Lion—he knows my pals in a minute.’
‘I suppose you mean he knows your friends from your enemies?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then he ought not to growl at me. I’m one of your friends.’
‘You’re friendly as long as it suits yer purpose, that’s all.’
‘All right, Heckett; have it your own way. How’s the head?’
‘Orful; can’t sleep with it.’
‘Let’s look at it again.’
With a hand as gentle as a woman’s, Birnie removed the bandages, and examined the wounded man.
After carefully looking at a rapidly healing wound, he put back the strappings and the linen, and felt the patient’s pulse.
‘All right, Heckett, you’re going on well. You’ll be able to get out in a week. By Jove! I thought it was all up with you that night you sent for me in a hurry. I didn’t expect you’d live till the morning.’
‘But I did, ye see; and I mean to live a good bit longer yet. Josh Heckett isn’t going to snuff: it just for a crack on the head.’
‘No, you weren’t born to die that way, Josh.’
The invalid glanced up at the doctor’s face with a look of such intense rage that it convulsed his swollen features, and made him cry out with pain.
‘Mind what you say, governor,’ he hissed, clinching his fist under the counterpane. ‘If I come to a bad end there’s others as ‘ll have to be in the same boat with me.’
The doctor laughed, and turned the conversation.
‘How does Gertie manage?’
‘Oh, all right. She’s a kind wench; I don’t know what I should do without her. She’s a fust-class nuss, and she attends the animiles, and she can talk to the customers better nor I can.’
‘Well, then, why do you swear at her?’
The man looked at him a moment as if he had not heard aright.
‘Swear at her! Why, you’ll ask me why I looks at her next. There ain’t nothin’ in swearing at anybody, is there? ‘Tain’t hitting of ’em, is it?’
Mr. Josh Heckett was lost in amazement. The doctor objected to his swearing at Gertie. Why, he swore at everything—at the dogs, at the guinea-pigs, at the chairs and tables, at himself—why should he make an exception of Gertie?
‘Well, I’m blowed!’ he added, when he had fully realized the enormity of the objection. ‘This here’s a free country, and a cove ain’t to swear at his own gal. Oh, crikey!
‘Well, don’t do it, Josh; that’s all I ask you. The girl’s a good little lass, and she doesn’t like it.’
Josh Heckett pulled himself up in bed.
‘Look here, Oliver Birnie, Hessquire, Hemd., you get my head well, that’s your business. Me and my gal’s got on pretty well without your assistance up to now, and we’re wery much obliged, but “declined with thanks,” as they sez in the noose-papers. Oliver Birnie, Hessquire, Hemd., drop it.’
‘You’re facetious to-day, Josh. Never mind; you’re always glad enough to send for me when you’re in a mess.’
‘Yes, and you was very glad of my services once.’
The doctor’s brow darkened as he muttered:
‘That was a bad time for a good many of us—a time we should like to forget.’
‘I dessay,’ growled Heckett; ‘and as you’d like other people to forget too. You’ve got on in the world, and rolls your eyes hup, and does the wirtuous now. I can’t afford to.’
‘You’ve had no end of money,’ said the doctor. ‘Heaven only knows what you do with it. Why do you keep on this wretched den, and these wretched animals? You could afford to retire and live decently and in comfort.’
‘No, I couldn’t. I’ve spent all the money I ever made. You don’t believe it, but I have. Besides, I must keep on this place. If I hadn’t a crib like this, how could I live? It isn’t so respectable as the old crib you and Egerton and Marston, and all the lot of you, was glad enough to come to once, perhaps, but it soots me quite as well.’
The man winked at the doctor as well as his bruised face would let him. The doctor thrust his hands in his pockets, and walked up and down the room, treading on the toy terrier’s tail, and narrowly escaping a grab from the bull-dog in consequence.
‘Heckett, do you ever think what might have happened if Marston had turned traitor?’
The invalid went pale on the only side of his face that could change colour.
‘Don’t talk like that,’ he growled. ‘I ain’t well, and it worrits me. Bah! he’s died in furrin parts, or gone too stone broke ever to get ’ome agin. I ain’t always sure as may be it wasn’t him as done it. What did he bolt to America for directly afterwards? Only he hadn’t no motive, and the other had, and I allus looks at motives. Besides, anyway, it ‘ud be wus for you, now Egerton’s drownded, than it would for me. You’re better off now than you wos then, and he might want to go snacks, perhaps. A poor cove like me wouldn’t be high enough game for him to fly at.’
Birnie glanced at the old dog-fancier, as he lay with his grey hair straggling over his bandaged head.
‘You’re very poor, aren’t you, Heckett!’ he said presently with a peculiar intonation in his voice.
‘Yes, I am. Curse you! what do you look like that at me for? Perhaps you think I ain’t poor? Perhaps you thinks as I’m Baron Rotschild, a-livin’ in this here drum for the benefit o’ my ‘elth? Perhaps you thinks as I lends money to the Emperor O’ Rooshia at five per cent., and only goes out after dark, for fear the Goverment should call in the day-time for a loan, and have to go away without it?’ The old man rose in the bed, his body quivering with rage.
‘Nonsense, Heckett!’ said the doctor, trying to quiet him.
‘What a queer old fellow you are! Of course you’re poor. Why, you wouldn’t worry me for money as you do if you weren’t.’
‘No, of course, I shouldn’t.’
‘There, there,’ continued the doctor, arranging his pillows and smoothing the bandage that Heckett had moved in his excitement; ‘lie still and get well; that’s what you’ve got to do. I’ll come and see you again in a day or two.’
The doctor nodded to his patient, tumbled over the bulldog, and made a bolt for the door. Outside Gertie was waiting for him.
‘Your grandfather’s better, my child,’ he said. ‘He’ll be about in a week again. Good-bye.’
Dr. Birnie patted her face and went out of the door. He walked rapidly up Little Queer Street and through the Dials, making his way into New Oxford Street. Then he turned up past the Museum, and into Russell Square. Leaving the square, and turning into one of the streets branching off from it, he became aware of something shiny on a doorstep that seemed to shine right at him.
He looked up.
He