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Perhaps it’s safer after all.” “Well, you write.” “Why should I, rather than you?” “Because you’re his cousin.” Welsh considered again. “Well, I don’t suppose it matters much. I’ll write, if you’re afraid.” It was these amiable little touches in his friend’s conversation that helped to make Twiddel’s lot at this time so pleasant.
His opinion on the converse circumstance was not expressed. Much to his landlord’s disappointment, he informed him that he should probably leave again that afternoon, and then he went out for a walk. About half an hour later he was once more in the street where, not so very long ago, a very exciting cab-race had finished. He strolled slowly past Dr Twiddel’s house.
A frowsy little servant opened the door. “Is Dr Twiddel at home?” he asked. “Dr Twiddel’s abroad, sir,” said the maid. “No one in at all, then?” “Dr Billson sees ’is patients, sir—w’en there his any.” “When do you expect Dr Billson?” “In about an hour, sir, ’e usually comes hin.” “Excellent!” thought Mr Bunker. Aloud he said, “Well, I’m a patient. I’ll come in and wait.”
“We will talk this over, Mr Welsh.” “I am sorry I happen to be going,” said Welsh, taking his hat and coat. “What, without your lunatic?” asked Mr Bunker. “That is Dr Twiddel’s affair, not mine. Kindly let me pass, sir.”
It seemed to be Dr Twiddel’s dining- and sitting-room. “Pipes, photographs, well-sat-in chairs,” he observed, “and a window.” He pulled aside the blind and looked out into the darkness of a strip of back-garden. For a minute he listened intently, but no sound came from the house. Then he threw up the sash and scrambled out.
Mrs Gabbon had evidently “’eard sommat” from Mr Duggs, and treated him to little of her society. The boredom became so excessive that he decided he must make a move soon, however rash it was. The only active step he took, and indeed the only step he saw his way to take, was a call on Dr Twiddel’s locum. But luck seemed to run dead against him.
All the time his ears had been alive to anything going on outside, and now he heard a cab rattle up and stop close by. It might be at Dr Twiddel’s, he thought, and, turning from his visitor, he sprang to the window. Remarking distantly, “I hear a cab; it is possibly a friend I am expecting,” Mr Duggs stepped to the other window.
“In the first place, how did you come to have anything to do with me?” Welsh, whose sharp wits instantly divined the weak point in the attack, cut in quickly, “Don’t tell him if he doesn’t know already!” But Twiddel’s relapse to virtue was complete. “I was asked to take charge of you while——” He hesitated. “While I was unwell,” smiled Mr Bunker. “Yes?” “I was to travel with you.” “Ah!”
Well, after all, there were many consolations. Did Twiddle say he was hard up? Welsh himself in an even more evil case. He narrated various unfortunate transactions connected with the turf and other pursuits, with regret, no doubt, and yet with a fine rakish defiance of destiny. Twiddel’s face cleared, and he began to show something of the same gallant spirit.
The gentleman who swaggered in and clapped the doctor on the back, who next threw himself into the easiest chair and his hat and coat over the table, was in fact Mr Robert Welsh. From the moment he entered he pervaded the room; the stethoscope seemed to grow less conspicuous, Dr Twiddel’s chin more diminutive, the apartment itself a mere background to this guest. Why?
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