The Lady Sleuths MEGAPACK TM(148)

                “Hubert,” Hilda said to me, when we were alone once more; “we mustn’t keep her here. She will be a hindrance, not a help. One way or another we must manage to get rid of her.”

                “How can we?” I asked. “We can’t turn her loose upon the mountain roads with a Nepaulese escort. She isn’t fit for it. She would be frantic with terror.”

                “I’ve thought of that, and I see only one thing possible. I must go on with her myself as fast as we can push to Sir Ivor’s place, and then return to help you nurse the Professor.”

                I saw she was right. It was the sole plan open to us. And I had no fear of letting Hilda go off alone with Lady Meadowcroft and the bearers. She was a host in herself, and could manage a party of native servants at least as well as I could.

                So Hilda went, and came back again. Meanwhile, I took charge of the nursing of Sebastian. Fortunately, I had brought with me a good stock of jungle-medicines in my little travelling-case, including plenty of quinine; and under my careful treatment the Professor passed the crisis and began to mend slowly. The first question he asked me when he felt himself able to talk once more was, “Nurse Wade—what has become of her?”—for he had not yet seen her. I feared the shock for him.



                             “She is here with me,” I answered, in a very measured voice. “She is waiting to be allowed to come and help me in taking care of you.”

                He shuddered and turned away. His face buried itself in the pillow. I could see some twinge of remorse had seized upon him. At last he spoke. “Cumberledge,” he said, in a very low and almost frightened tone, “don’t let her come near me! I can’t bear it. I can’t bear it.”

                Ill as he was, I did not mean to let him think I was ignorant of his motive. “You can’t bear a woman whose life you have attempted,” I said, in my coldest and most deliberate way, “to have a hand in nursing you! You can’t bear to let her heap coals of fire on your head! In that you are right. But, remember, you have attempted my life too; you have twice done your best to get me murdered.”

                He did not pretend to deny it. He was too weak for subterfuges. He only writhed as he lay. “You are a man,” he said, shortly, “and she is a woman. That is all the difference.” Then he paused for a minute or two. “Don’t let her come near me,” he moaned once more, in a piteous voice. “Don’t let her come near me!”

                “I will not,” I answered. “She shall not come near you. I spare you that. But you will have to eat the food she prepares; and you know she will not poison you. You will have to be tended by the servants she chooses; and you know they will not murder you. She can heap coals of fire on your head without coming into your tent. Consider that you sought to take her life—and she seeks to save yours! She is as anxious to keep you alive as you are anxious to kill her.”

                He lay as in a reverie. His long white hair made his clear-cut, thin face look more unearthly than ever, with the hectic flush of fever upon it. At last he turned to me. “We each work for our own ends,” he said, in a weary way. “We pursue our own objects. It suits me to get rid of her: it suits her to keep me alive. I am no good to her dead; living, she expects to wring a confession out of me. But she shall not have it. Tenacity of purpose is the one thing I admire in life. She has the tenacity of purpose—and so have I. Cumberledge, don’t you see it is a mere duel of endurance between us?”



                             “And may the just side win,” I answered, solemnly.

                It was several days later before he spoke to me of it again. Hilda had brought some food to the door of the tent and passed it in to me for our patient. “How is he now?” she whispered.