The Simpkins Plot Part 8

"I do not. It was a backward place where I was reared, and I wasn't kept to school regular; and what's more, the Irish wasn't taught in them times."

"It wouldn't have helped you much if it was," said Meldon. "A supposit.i.tious case is the same thing, very nearly, as a hypothetical proposition. It consists of two parts, a protasis and an apodosis.

For instance--"

"It's laughing at me you are."

"It is not, but trying to educate you a little. For instance, I should be putting a hypothetical case if I were to say, 'Supposing you cooked the dinner I described every day for Mr. Doyle--'"

"I couldn't do it then, for I wouldn't be fit."

"That's exactly what makes it a supposit.i.tious case," said Meldon.

"Now perhaps you'll understand that I don't intend to poison Mr.

Simpkins myself."

"Nor the doctor won't do it for you," said Sabina.

"You said a minute ago that he would."

"He would not, for he's a nice gentleman, as simple and innocent as a child, only an odd time when his temper would be riz."

"Any way he won't be asked to. Good-bye, Sabina. I'll look in and see you next time I'm pa.s.sing. Don't let that red-haired cousin of yours be putting phosphorous paste, or any of those patent rat poisons, into Mr. Simpkins' food. She'll get herself into trouble if she does."

CHAPTER VI.

Meldon opened the door of Mr. Doyle's private sitting-room without knocking and walked in. The hotel keeper and Dr. O'Donoghue were sitting at opposite ends of the table, with a bottle of whisky and a jug of water between them. Doyle, who was placed with his back to the door, spoke without looking round.

"Didn't I tell you, Sabina Gallagher," he said, "that if you came into this room, interrupting me and the doctor, I'd cut the two ears off you, and send you back to your mother with them in a box in the well of the car? Did I tell you that or did I not? And now nothing will do you but to fling open the door as if the Lord-Lieutenant and the rest of them playboys beyond in Dublin Castle was--"

The expression of Dr. O'Donoghue's face made Mr. Doyle pause. He turned and saw Meldon standing on the threshold.

"Be d.a.m.n!" he said, "if it isn't Mr. Meldon. The Major was telling me last week he was expecting you. You're looking well, so you are.

England agrees with you."

"I can't say as much for you," said Meldon. "You're getting fat. You ought to take more exercise. Why don't you start a golf links? It would do you all the good in the world, and be an attraction to the hotel besides."

"If I'm putting on flesh," said Doyle, "it's a queer thing, for the life's fair tormented out of me."

"Simpkins, I suppose," said Meldon.

"The same," said Doyle. "The like of that man for making trouble in a place I never seen; no, nor n.o.body else."

"I hear," said Meldon, "that the doctor's thinking of poisoning him."

"Whoever told you that told you a lie," said Dr. O'Donoghue; "not but what--"

"Myself and the doctor," said Doyle, "was making up plans when you come in on us. We was thinking of what you might call an ambuscade, worked so as we'd get the better of him without his being able to take the law of us; and he's mighty fond of the law, that same gentleman--too fond."

"If I can be of any help to you," said Meldon, "you can count on me. I have a good deal of natural talent for ambuscades. Trot out the details of your scheme, and I'll be able to tell you in two words whether it's workable or not."

"They do say," said Doyle, "that he has the fishing let to an English gentleman; and he's mighty particular about preserving it. Now the doctor here has the name of being a good fisherman."

"If he goes poaching," said Meldon, "he'll get the worst of it. The Major appears to have tried that on, and he simply made things unpleasant for himself, without annoying Simpkins in the least."

"It's not poaching we're thinking of," said Doyle; "but--you know I'm a magistrate these times, on account of being the Chairman of the Urban Council."

"I know that; but if you're thinking of dragging up Simpkins before the Petty Sessions on a bogus charge, you may as well put the idea out of your head at once. It won't work. You'll have the Major on the Bench with you, and though he doesn't like the man, I don't think he'd commit him to prison for cruelty to children, or breaking windows while under the influence of drink, or anything of that sort, unless he'd really done it."

"I wouldn't do the like," said Doyle, "and no more would the doctor."

"Our plan," said the doctor, "is to get a salmon, a large salmon."

"Poach it?" said Meldon.

"No; buy it. Doyle would buy it. Then he'd give it to me in the presence of several witnesses--"

"Sabina would do for one," said Meldon, "She's a most intelligent girl, and I'm sure she'd swear anything afterwards that she was wanted to."

"She wouldn't have to swear anything but the truth," said Doyle.

"Of course not," said Meldon. "But lots of people won't do even that."

"I'd go up the river," said Dr. O'Donoghue, "and I'd take my rod and landing-net and the salmon with me, and I'd sit down on the bank and wait."

"Simpkins," said Doyle, "does be walking up along the river every evening, so the doctor wouldn't be there for very long before he'd be caught."

"I see," said Meldon. "The idea would be for Simpkins to prosecute the doctor for poaching that salmon, and then to trot out Sabina in court to prove--"

"Sabina and the rest of the witnesses," said Doyle. "We'd have plenty."

"It's not a bad ambuscade at all," said Meldon.

"The Major," said Doyle, "would talk straight to him off the Bench, the way he'd feel small; and I'd have a word or two myself to say to him after the Major was done. And the police would be standing round smiling like--"

"I can't imagine anything more unpleasant," said Meldon, "than being grinned at by a policeman. All the same, I think it will be better not to catch him in that ambuscade."

"And why not?" said Doyle.

"The fact is," said Meldon, "I'm thinking of dealing with the man myself, and I'd rather he was left entirely in my hands for the present."

"Be d.a.m.n!" said Doyle, "but I wouldn't ask better than just for yourself to take in hand and hunt him out of the place altogether."

"It's you could do it," said Dr. O'Donoghue.

"It is," said Doyle. "Divil the better man at devising of ambuscades ever I come across, and I've known some in my day that you might call gladiators."

"I'm not precisely a professional gladiator," said Meldon modestly; "but I've studied strategy a little in my time, and I rather think I'll get the better of Mr. Simpkins. I suppose now you would not object to attending his funeral?"