General John Regan Part 18

"Where's Mr. Doyle?" said Dr. O'Grady.

"As regards the visit of the Lord-Lieutenant," said Constable Moriarty rousing himself and moving a little bit away from Mary Ellen, "what I was saying this minute to Mary Ellen was??"

"Where's Mr. Doyle?" said Dr. O'Grady.

"He's within," said Mary Ellen. "Where else would he be?"

"As regards the Lord-Lieutenant," said Constable Moriarty, "and seeing that Mary Ellen might be a near friend of the gentleman that the statue's for??"

Dr. O'Grady hurried through the back door. He found Doyle sitting over account books in his private-room. That was his way of spending Sunday afternoon.

"A sheet of notepaper," said Dr. O'Grady. "Quick now, Doyle. I have my fountain pen, so don't bother about ink."

"Where's the hurry?" said Doyle.

"There's every hurry."

He wrote rapidly, folded the letter, addressed it to Mrs. Ford, and handed it to Doyle.

"Put that in your trousers' pocket," he said, "and roll it round a few times. I want it to look as if it had been there for two or three days."

"What's the meaning of this at all?" said Doyle.

"Now get your hat. Go off as fast as you can pelt to Mr. Ford's house.

Give that letter to the servant and tell her that you only found out this afternoon that you'd forgotten to post it."

"Will you tell me???"

"I'll tell you nothing till you're back. Go on now, Doyle. Go at once.

If you hurry you'll get to the house before she does. She was two miles out of the town when I left her and too exhausted to walk fast. But if you do meet her remember that you haven't seen me since yesterday. Have you got that clear in your head? Very well. Off with you. And, I say, I expect the letter will be looking all right when you take it out again, but if it isn't just rub it up and down the front of your trousers for a while. I want it to be brownish and a good deal crumpled. It won't do any harm if you blow a few puffs of tobacco over it."

CHAPTER IX

An hour later Doyle entered the doctor's consulting room.

"I have it done," he said. "I done what you bid me; but devil such a job ever I had as what it was." Doyle had evidently suffered from some strong emotion, anger perhaps, or terror. He felt in his pocket as he spoke, and, finding that he had no handkerchief, he wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. He looked at his hand afterwards and sighed.

The hairs on the back of it were pasted down with sweat "Have you such a thing as a drop of anything to drink in the house?"

"I have not," said Dr. O'Grady, "how could I? Do you think I've lost all my self-respect? Is it likely I'd order another bottle of whisky out of your shop when you're dunning me every day of my life for the price of the last I got? Tell me what happened about the letter?"

Doyle pa.s.sed a parched tongue across his lips. The inside of his mouth was quite dry. Extreme nervous excitement often produces this effect.

"If it was even a cup of tea," he said, "it would be better than nothing. I've a terrible thirst on me."

"Sorry," said Dr. O'Grady, "but I've no tea either. Not a grain in the house since last Friday. I hope this will be a lesson to you, Doyle, and will teach you not to ballyrag your customers in future. But I don't want to rub it in. Get on with your story."

"It could be," said Doyle, "that there'd be water in your pump. I'm not sure will I be able to speak much without I drink something."

"The pump's all right," said Dr. O'Grady. "Just sit where you are for a moment and I'll fetch you some water. It may give you typhoid. I wouldn't drink it myself without boiling it, but that's your look out."

He left the moor and returned a few minutes later with a large tumbler of cold water. Doyle looked at it mournfully. He knew perfectly well that the doctor had both whisky and tea in the house, but he recognised the impossibility of getting either the one or the other. He raised the gla.s.s to his mouth.

"Glory be to G.o.d," he said, "but it's the first time I've wetted my lips with the same this twenty years!"

"It will do you a lot of good if it doesn't give you typhoid," said Dr.

O'Grady. "How did you get so frightfully thirsty?"

The question was natural. Doyle drank the whole tumbler of water at a draught. There was no doubt that he had been very thirsty.

"Will you tell me now," he said, "what had that one in the temper she was in?"

"Mrs. Ford," said Dr. O'Grady, "was annoyed because she thought she wasn't going to be given a chance of making herself agreeable to the Lord-Lieutenant."

"If she speaks to the Lord-Lieutenant," said Doyle, "after the fashion she was speaking to me, it's likely that she'll not get the chance of making herself agreeable to him a second time. Devil such a temper I ever saw any woman in, and I've seen some in my day."

"I know she'd be a bit savage. I hoped you wouldn't have met her."

"I did meet her. Wasn't she turning in at the gate at the same time that I was myself? 'There's a letter here, ma'am,' says I, 'that the doctor told me I was to give to you,' 'I suppose it was half an hour ago,'

said she, 'that he told you that,' Well, I pulled the letter out of my pocket, and I gave it a rub along the side of my pants the same as you told me. 'I suppose you're doing that,' said she, 'to put some dirt on it, to make it look,' said she, 'as if it had been in your pocket a week.'"

"You wouldn't think to look at her that she was so cute," said Dr.

O'Grady. "What did you say?"

"I said nothing either good or bad," said Doyle, "only that it was to get the dirt off the letter, and not to be putting it on that I was giving it a bit of a rub. Well, she took the letter and she opened it.

Then she looked me straight in the face. 'When did you get this letter from the doctor?' says she. So I told her it was last Friday you give it to me, and that I hadn't seen you since, and didn't care a great deal if I never seen you again. 'You impudent blackguard,' says she, 'the letter's not an hour written. The ink's not more than just dry on it yet,' 'I'm surprised,' said I, 'that it's that much itself. It's dripping wet I'd expect it to be with the sweat I'm in this minute on account of the way I've run to give it to you.'"

"Good," said Dr. O'Grady. "If there was a drop of whisky in the house I'd give it to you. I'll look in a minute. There might be some left in the bottom of the bottle. A man who can tell a lie like that on the spur of the moment??"

"It was true enough about the sweat," said Doyle. "You could have wrung my shirt into a bucket, though it wasn't running did it, for I didn't run. It was the way she was looking at me. I'm not overly fond of Mr.

Ford, and never was; but I don't know did ever I feel as sorry for any man as I did for him when she was looking at me."

The doctor rose and took a bottle of whisky from the cupboard in the corner of the room. There was enough in it to give Doyle a satisfactory drink and still to leave some for the doctor himself. He got another tumbler and two bottles of soda water.

"You needn't be opening one of them for me," said Doyle, "I have as much water drunk already as would drown all the whisky you have in the bottle. What I take now I'll take plain."

"She may be a bit sceptical about the letter," said Dr. O'Grady, "but I expect when she's talked it over with Ford she'll see the sense of presenting the illuminated address."

"Is it that one present the address? Believe you me, doctor, if she does the Lord-Lieutenant won't be inclined for giving us the pier. The look of her would turn a barrel of porter sour."

"She'll look quite different," said Dr. O'Grady, "when the time comes.

After all, Ford has to make the best of his opportunities like the rest of us. He can't afford to allow his wife to scowl at the Lord-Lieutenant."

"Was there no one else about the place, only her?" said Doyle.

"There were others, of course; but?the fact is, Doyle, if we got her back up at the start her husband would have written letters to Dublin Castle crabbing the whole show. Those fellows up there place extraordinary confidence in resident magistrates. They'd have been much more inclined to believe him than either you or me. If Ford was to set to work to spoil our show we'd probably not have got the Lord-Lieutenant down here at all. That's why I was so keen on your getting the letter to her at once, and leaving her under the impression that you'd had it in your pocket for two days."