For fully a week I saw nothing of Ambler.
Sir Bernard was unwell, and remained down at Hove; therefore I was compelled to attend to his practice. There were several serious cases, the patients being persons of note; thus I was kept very busy.
My friend’s silence was puzzling. I wrote to him, but received no response. A wire to his office in the City elicited the fact that Mr. Jevons was out of town. Probably he was still pursuing the inquiry he had so actively taken up. Nevertheless, I was dissatisfied that he should leave me so entirely in the dark as to his intentions and discoveries.
Ethelwynn came to town for the day, and I spent several hours shopping with her. She was strangely nervous, and all the old spontaneous gaiety seemed to have left her. She had read in the papers of the curious connection between the death of the man Lane and that of her unfortunate sister; therefore our conversation was mainly upon the river mystery. Sometimes she seemed ill at ease with me, as though fearing some discovery. Perhaps, however, it was merely my fancy.
I loved her. She was all the world to me; and yet in her eyes I seemed to read some hidden secret which she was endeavouring, with all the power at her command, to conceal. In such circumstances there was bound to arise between us a certain reserve that we had not before known. Her conversation was carried on in a mechanical manner, as though distracted by her inner thoughts; and when, after having tea together in Bond Street, we drove to the station, and I saw her off on her return to Neneford, my mind was full of darkest apprehensions.
Yes. That interview convinced me more than ever that she was, in some manner, cognisant of the truth. The secret existence of old Mr. Courtenay, the man whom I myself had pronounced dead, was the crowning point of the strange affair; and yet I felt by some inward intuition that this fact was not unknown to her.
All the remarkable events of that moonlit night when I had followed husband and wife along the river-bank came back to me, and I saw vividly the old man’s face, haggard and drawn, just as it had been in life. Surely there could be no stranger current of events than those which formed the Seven Secrets. They were beyond explanation—all of them. I knew nothing. I had certainly seen results; but I knew not their cause.
Nitrate of amyl was not a drug which a costermonger would select with a view to committing suicide. Indeed, I daresay few of my readers, unless they are doctors or chemists, have ever before heard of it.
Therefore my own conclusion, fully endorsed by the erratic Ambler, was that the poor fellow had been secretly poisoned.
Nearly a fortnight passed, and I heard nothing of Ambler. He was still “out of town.” Day by day passed, but nothing of note transpired. Sir Bernard was still suffering from a slight touch of sciatica at home, and on visiting him one Sunday I found him confined to his bed, grumbling and peevish. He was eccentric in his miserly habits and his hatred of society, beyond doubt; and the absurdities which his enemies attributed to him were not altogether unfounded. But he had, at all events, the rare quality of entertaining for his profession a respect nearly akin to enthusiasm. Indeed, according to his views, the faculty possessed almost infallible qualities. In confidence he had more than once admitted to me that certain of his colleagues practising in Harley Street were amazing donkeys; but he would never have allowed anyone else to say so. From the moment a man acquired that diploma which gave him the right over life and death, that man became, in his eyes, an august personage for the world at large. It was a crime, he thought, for a patient not to submit to his decision, and certainly it must be admitted that his success in the treatment of nervous disorders had been most remarkable.
“You were at that lecture by Deboutin, of Paris, the other day!” he exclaimed to me suddenly, while I was seated at his bedside describing the work I had
been doing for him in London. “Why didn’t you tell me you were going there?”
“I went quite unexpectedly—with a friend.”
“With whom?”
“Ambler Jevons.”
“Oh, that detective fellow!” laughed the old physician. “Well,” he added, “it was all very interesting, wasn’t it?”
“Very—especially your own demonstrations. I had no idea that you were in correspondence with Deboutin.”
He laughed; then, with a knowing look, said:
“Ah, my dear fellow, nowadays it doesn’t do to tell anyone of your own researches. The only way is to spring it upon the profession as a great triumph: just as Koch did his cure for tuberculosis. One must create an impression, if only with a quack remedy. The day of the steady plodder is past; it’s all hustle, even in medicine.”
“Well, you certainly did make an impression,” I said, smiling. “Your experiments were a revelation to the profession. They were talking of them at the hospital only yesterday.”
“H’m. They thought me an old fogey, eh? But, you see, I’ve been keeping pace with the times, Boyd. A man to succeed nowadays must make a boom with something, it matters not what. For years I’ve been experimenting in secret, and some day I will show them further results of my researches—and they will come upon the profession like a thunderclap, staggering belief.”
The old man chuckled to himself as he thought of his scientific triumph, and how one day he would give forth to the world a truth hitherto unsuspected.
We chatted for a long time, mostly upon technicalities which cannot interest the reader, until suddenly he said:
“I’m getting old, Boyd. These constant attacks I have render me unfit to go to town and sit in judgment on that pack of silly women who rush to consult me whenever they have a headache or an erring husband. I think that very soon I ought to retire. I’ve done sufficient hard work all the years since I was a ‘locum’ down in Oxfordshire. I’m worn out.”
“Oh, no,” I said. “You mustn’t retire yet. If you did, the profession would lose one of its most brilliant men.”
“Enough of compliments,” he snapped, turning wearily on his pillow. “I’m sick to death of it all. Better to retire while I have fame, than to outlive it. When I give up you will step into my shoes, Boyd, and it will be a good thing for you.”