Cursed by a Fortune Part 76

"You had better go, sir," he said sharply, "and leave me with the nurse."

"No: do your work," said Garstang harshly; "I stay here."

Leigh made no answer, but took the housekeeper's place, to examine the sufferer's dilated pupils and test the pulsation, and then he turned quickly to Garstang.

"Where are the bottle and gla.s.s?" he said sharply.

"What bottle--what gla.s.s?" replied Garstang, taken by surprise.

"The symptoms seem to accord with what you say, but I want to make perfectly sure. Where is the drug she took?"

"Oh, it was in the tea, sir, there," cried the housekeeper.

Garstang turned upon her with a savage gesture, and Leigh saw it. His suspicions were raised.

"Here, sir," said the woman, pointing to the pot.

"Oh yes," said Garstang hurriedly: "she took it in her tea."

"She did not, sir!" cried the woman desperately.

"Hold your tongue!" roared Garstang.

"I won't, doctor, if I die for it," cried the woman. "He drugged her, poor dear. I was obliged to do as he said."

"The woman's mad," cried Garstang. "Go on with your work."

A savage instinct seemed to drive Leigh, on hearing this, to bound at Garstang, seize him by the throat and strangle him; but a glance at Kate checked it, and the physician regained the ascendancy.

He poured a little of the tea into a clean cup, smelt, tasted, and spat it out.

"Quite right," he said firmly. "Don't let that tea-pot be touched again."

Garstang winced, for the words were to him charged with death, a trial for murder, and the silent evidence of the crime.

"Here, you help me," said Leigh, quickly; and he rinsed out the cup with water from the urn, poured a couple of teaspoonfuls from a bottle into the cup, and kneeling by the couch while the housekeeper held the insensible girl's head, tried to insert the spoon between the closely set teeth.

The effort was vain, and he was forced to trickle the antidote he tried to administer through the teeth, but there was no effort made to swallow; the insensibility was too deep.

"Better?" said Garstang, after watching the doctor's efforts to revive his patient for quite half an hour.

"Better?" he said, fiercely. "Can you not see, man, that she is steadily pa.s.sing away?"

"No, no, she seems calmer, and more like one asleep. Oh, persevere, doctor!"

"I want help here--the counsel and advice of the best man you can get.

Send instantly for Sir Edward Lacey, Harley Street."

"No," said Garstang, frowning darkly. "You seem an able pract.i.tioner.

It is a matter of time for the effects of the potent drug to die out, is it not?"

"Yes, of course; but I fear the worst."

"Go on with what you are doing, doctor; I have faith in you."

At that moment Leigh felt that nothing more could be done--that nature was the great physician; and he once more knelt down by the side of the couch for a time, while a terrible silence seemed to have fallen on the place, even the housekeeper looking now as if she were turned to stone, and dared not move her lips as she intently watched the calm white face upon the pillow.

"I can do no more," said Leigh at last, in a hoa.r.s.e whisper. "G.o.d help me! How weak and helpless one feels at a time like this!"

The words came involuntarily from his lips, for at that moment he seemed to be alone with the sufferer, his patient once again, whose life he would have given his own to save.

"Oh, come, come, doctor!" said Garstang, breaking in harshly upon the terrible stillness, and there was a forced gaiety in his tone. "It was a little sleeping draught; surely the effects will soon pa.s.s off. You are taking too serious a view of the case."

"I take the view of it, sir," said Leigh, gravely, as he bent lower over the marble face before him, fighting hard to control the wild desire to press his lips to the temple where an artery throbbed, "I take the view given to us by experience. You had better send for further help at once."

"No, no. It is only making an expose, where none is necessary. I will not believe that she is so bad. You medical men are so p.r.o.ne to magnify symptoms."

"Indeed?" said Leigh, who dared not look at the speaker, but bent once more over his patient. "You came and told me that your wife was dying."

"His wife, sir?" cried the housekeeper, indignantly. "It's a wicked lie!"

Garstang turned savagely upon the woman, but he had to face Leigh, who sprang to his feet with a wild exaltation making every pulse throb and thrill.

"Not his wife!" he cried fiercely.

"No, sir, and never would be."

"Curse you!" roared Garstang, making at her; but Leigh thrust him back.

"Then there has been foul play here."

"How dare you?" cried Garstang. "I called you in to--But go on with your work, sir. Can you not see that the woman drinks?--she is mad drunk now. Hysterical, and does not know what she is saying. The lady is my wife, and I insist upon your attending to your professional duties or leaving the house. Is this the conduct of a physician?"

"It is the conduct of a man, sir, who finds himself face to face with a scoundrel."

"You insolent hound!"

"John Garstang--"

"John Garstang!"

"Yes, John Garstang; you see I know you! It is true then that you have abducted this lady, or lured her into this place, where you have kept her secluded from her friends. There is no need to ask the reason. I can guess that."

"You--you--" cried Garstang, ghastly now in his surprise. "Who are you that you dare to speak to me like this?"

"I, sir, am the physician you called in to see his old patient, dying, I fear, from the effects of the drug you have administered," said Leigh, with unnatural calmness; "the man whose instinct tempts him to try and crush out your wretched life as he would that of some noxious beast.

But we have laws, and whatever the result is here, my duty is to hand you over to the police."