“An accident?” Mr. Fentolin exclaimed.

Gerald nodded.

“Our train ran off the line and pitched down an embankment.  Mr. Dunster has concussion of the brain.  He and I were taken to a miserable little inn near Wymondham.  From there I hired a motor-car and brought him here.”

“You hired a motor-car and brought him here,” Mr. Fentolin repeated softly.  “My dear boy—­forgive me if I find this a little hard to understand.  You say that you have brought him here.  Had he nothing to say about it?”

“He was unconscious when we picked him up,” Gerald explained.  “He is unconscious now.  The doctor said he would remain so for at least twenty-four hours, and it didn’t seem to me that the journey would do him any particular harm.  The roof had been stripped off the inn where we were, and the place was quite uninhabitable, so we should have had to have moved him somewhere.  We put him in the tonneau of the car and covered him up.  They have carried him now into a bedroom, and Sarson is looking after him.”

Mr. Fentolin sat quite silent.  His eyes blinked once or twice, and there was a curious curve about his lips.

“You have done well, my boy,” he pronounced slowly.  “Your scheme of bringing him here sounds a little primitive, but success justifies everything.”

Mr. Fentolin raised to his lips and blew softly a little gold whistle which hung from a chain attached to his waistcoat.  Almost immediately the door opened.  A man entered, dressed somberly in black, whose bearing and demeanour alike denoted the servant, but whose physique was the physique of a prize-fighter.  He was scarcely more than five feet six in height, but his shoulders were extraordinarily broad.  He had a short, bull neck and long, mighty arms.  His face, with the heavy jaw and small eyes, was the face of the typical fighting man, yet his features seemed to have become disposed by habit into an expression of gentle, almost servile civility.

“Meekins,” Mr. Fentolin said, “a visitor has arrived.  Do you happen to have noticed what luggage he brought?”

“There is one small dressing-case, sir,” the man replied; “nothing else that I have seen.”

“That is all we brought,” Gerald interposed.

“You will bring the dressing-case here at once,” Mr. Fentolin directed, “and also my compliments to Doctor Sarson, and any pocket-book or papers which may help us to send a message to the gentleman’s friends.”

Meekins closed the door and departed.  Mr. Fentolin turned back towards his nephew.

“My dear boy,” he said, “tell me why you look as though there were ghosts flitting about the room?  You are not ill, I trust?”

“Tired, perhaps,” Gerald answered shortly.  “We were many hours in the car.  I have had no sleep.”

Mr. Fentolin’s face was full of kindly sympathy.

“My dear fellow,” he exclaimed, “I am selfish, indeed!  I should not have kept you here for a moment.  You had better go and lie down.”