He turned away and walked out of the cottage. For an hour he walked
along the road. Then he stopped and walked back. Ropes drew him; he
could no longer keep away. He felt as if something must have happened.
Possibly he would find the doctor arrested and the police waiting for
himself, to be charged as an accomplice or a principal.
He found no such thing. The doctor was in the salon, with letters and
official forms before him. He looked up cheerfully.
"My English friend," he said, "the unexpected end of this young Irish
gentleman is a very melancholy affair. I have ascertained the name of
the family solicitors and have written to them. I have also written to
his brother as the head of the house. I find also, by examination of
his papers, that his life is insured--the amount is not stated, but I
have communicated the fact of the death. The authorities--they are,
very properly, careful in such matters--have received the necessary
notices and forms: to-morrow, all legal forms having been gone through,
we bury the deceased."
"So soon?"
"So soon? In these eases of advanced pulmonary disease the sooner the
better. The French custom of speedy interment may be defended as more
wholesome than our own. On the other hand, I admit that it has its weak
points. Cremation is, perhaps, the best and only method of removing the
dead which is open to no objections except one. I mean, of course, the
chance that the deceased may have met with his death by means of
poison. But such cases are rare, and, in most instances, would be
detected by the medical man in attendance before or at the time of
death. I think we need not----My dear friend, you look ill. Are you
upset by such a simple thing as the death of a sick man? Let me
prescribe for you. A glass of brandy neat. So," he went into the salle
'a manger and returned with his medicine. "Take that. Now let us
talk." The doctor continued his conversation in a cheerfully scientific
strain, never alluding to the conspiracy or to the consequences which
might follow. He told hospital stories bearing on deaths sudden and
unexpected; some of them he treated in a jocular vein. The dead man in
the next room was a Case: he knew of many similar and equally
interesting Cases. When one has arrived at looking upon a dead man as a
Case, there is little fear of the ordinary human weakness which makes
us tremble in the awful presence of death.