When I entered the dining-room, he and Lorna Bolivick were talking together. I watched their faces for a few seconds unheeded by them. I do not know what he was saying to her, but she was listening to him eagerly. In some way he had destroyed the instinctive feeling of revulsion which he had created in her mind months before. She seemed like one fascinated; he held her as though by a strong personality, a strange fascination. There was no doubt in my mind, either, that although he had come to Devonshire as the guest of young Buller, he was a rival for Lorna Bolivick's hand. As much as such a man as he could love a woman, he loved Lorna Bolivick, and meant to win her.

CHAPTER XXIII

SPRINGFIELD'S PROGRESS

After lunch, I got my chance of a few minutes' chat with Springfield. I think I managed it without arousing any suspicions; certainly he did not manifest any, neither did he appear in the slightest degree ruffled when I talked with him about Edgec.u.mbe's strange illness.

'You have been in India, I think, Springfield?' I said.

'Who told you that?'

'I have almost forgotten. Perhaps it was St. Mabyn, or it might have been Buller. Were you there long?'

'A couple of years,' he replied. 'I was glad to get away, too. It is a beastly part of the world.'

'I asked,' I said, 'because Edgec.u.mbe had just come from India when I first saw him, and I was wondering whether you could throw any light upon his sudden illness.'

'My dear chap, I'm not a doctor. What does McClure say?'

'He's in a bit of a fog,' I replied, 'so is Merril.'

'Doctors usually are,' he laughed. 'For my own part, I think that a great deal of fuss has been made about the whole business. After all, what did it amount to?'

'It was a very strange illness,' I replied.

'Was it? Certainly the fellow was taken bad suddenly, and he fell down in a sort of fit, but that is nothing strange.'

'It is to a man whose general health is as good as that of Edgec.u.mbe.'

'Yes, but India plays ducks and drakes with any man's const.i.tution,' he replied. 'You see, you know nothing about Edgec.u.mbe, and his loss of memory may be a very convenient thing to him.'

'What do you mean?

'I mean nothing, except this: Edgec.u.mbe, I presume, has been a man of the world; how he lost his memory--a.s.suming, of course, that he _has_ lost it--is a mystery. But he has lived in India, and possibly, while there, went the whole hog. Excuse me, Lus...o...b.., but I have no romantic notions about him. He seems to be on the high moral horse just now, but what his past has been neither of us know. As I said, life in India plays ducks and drakes with a man's const.i.tution, especially if he has been a bit wild. Doubtless the remains of some old disease is in his system, and--and--we saw the results.' He lit a cigarette as he spoke, and I noticed that his hand was perfectly steady.

'Is that your explanation?' I asked.

'I have no explanation,' he replied, 'but that seems to me as likely as any other.'

'Because, between ourselves,' I went on, 'both McClure and Merril think he was poisoned.'

He was silent for a few seconds, as though thinking, then he asked quite naturally, 'How could that be?'

'McClure, as you know, was an Army doctor in India,' I said.

'Well, then, if any one ought to know, he ought,' and he puffed at his cigarette; 'but what symptoms did he give of being poisoned?'

I detailed Edgec.u.mbe's condition, his torpor, and the symptoms which followed.

'Is there anything suggestive of poisoning in that?' he asked, like a man curious.

'McClure seems to think so.'

'Of course he may be right,' he replied carelessly, 'but I don't know enough about the subject to pa.s.s an opinion worth having. All the same, if he were poisoned, it is a wonder to me how he got well so quickly'; and he hummed a popular music-hall air.

'The thing which puzzles McClure,' I went on, 'and he seems to know a good deal about Indian poisons, is the almost impossibility of such a thing happening here in England. He says that the Indians have a trick of poisoning their enemies by p.r.i.c.king them with some little instrument that they possess, an instrument by which they can inject poison into the blood. It leaves no mark after death, but is followed by symptoms almost identical with those which Edgec.u.mbe had. During the time the victim is suffering, there is a little blue mark on the spot where the injection was made.'

I looked at him steadily as I spoke, trying to see whether he manifested any uneasiness or emotion. But he baffled me. I thought I saw his lips twitch, and his eyes contract, but I might easily have been mistaken. If he were a guilty man, then he was the greatest actor, and had the most supreme command over himself, of any one I had ever seen.

'And did you find such a mark on your friend?' he asked, after a few seconds' silence.

'Yes,' I replied, 'close to the elbow.'

He showed no emotion whatever, and yet I could not help feeling that he was conscious of what was in my mind. Of course this might be pure imagination on my part, and I do not think any detective of fiction fame would have gained the slightest inkling from his face that he was in any way connected with it.

Springfield took his cigarette case-from his tunic, and extracted another cigarette. 'It seems a bit funny, doesn't it? but I don't pretend to offer an explanation. By the way, will he be well enough to go back to duty when his leave is up?'

'I don't know,' I replied. 'McClure will have to decide that.'

'I should think you will be glad to get rid of him, Lus...o...b...'

'Why?' I asked.

'The fellow seems such an impossible bounder. Excuse me, but that is how he struck me.'

'You didn't seem to think so when you thanked him for saving your life,'

was my reply.

'No, of course that was different'; and his voice was somewhat strained as he spoke. 'I--I ought not to have said that, Lus...o...b... When one man owes another his life, he--he should be careful. If I can do the fellow a good turn, I will; and since in these days anybody can become an officer in the British Army, I--I----' He stammered uneasily, and then went on: 'Of course it is different when you have to meet a man as an equal in a friend's house. But there,--I must be going. I have to get back to town to-night.'

In spite of what I had said to Edgec.u.mbe, I was angry at seeing that Springfield spent two hours that afternoon with Lorna Bolivick. There could be no doubt about it, the fellow had broken down all her antagonism towards him, and was bent on making a good impression on her. I found, too, that Sir Thomas Bolivick regarded him with great favour. By some means or another, the news had come to him that Springfield was a possible heir to a peerage, and that while he was at present poor, he would on the death of a distant relative become a very rich man. This fact had doubtless increased his interest in Springfield, and perhaps had lessened his annoyance at the fact that Lorna had failed to fall in with his previous wishes concerning her.

'Remarkably clever fellow.' he confided in me; 'the kind of man who makes an impression wherever he goes. When I saw him at St. Mabyn's more than a year ago, I did not like him so much, but he grows on one.'

'By the way, what peerage is he heir to?' I asked. 'I never heard of it until yesterday.'

'Oh, he'll come into Lord Carbis's t.i.tle and estates.'

'Carbis? Then it's not an old affair?'

'Oh no,--the present Lord Carbis was created a peer in 1890.'

'A brewer, isn't he?' I asked.

'Yes,' and I thought Sir Thomas looked somewhat uneasy. 'Of course there are very few old peerages now,' he went on; 'the old families have a way of dying out, somehow. But Carbis is one of the richest men in the country. I suppose he paid nearly a million for the Carbis estates.