I'm a man, after all. I like women.
I don't want to marry again, not in the least.
Well, that's all right. I've had to be discreet, but I've had my good times all right.
Poor Addie hasn't.
Addie's a really nice woman.
She's the kind of woman men want to marry.
Give her half a chance and she would marry again, and be very happy and make the chap happy too.
"But old Jeff saw her always as Frank's wife and hypnotized her into seeing herself like that.
He doesn't know it, but we've been in prison.
I broke out, on the quiet, a long time ago.
Addie broke out this summer, and it gave him a shock. It broke up his world.
Result, Ruby Keene."
Irrepressibly he sang:
"But she is in her grave, and oh! The difference to me!
"Come and have a drink, Clithering."
It was hardly surprising, Sir Henry reflected, that Mark Gaskell should be an object of suspicion to the police.
Chapter 30
Doctor Metcalf was one of the best-known physicians in Danemouth.
He had no aggressive bedside manner, but his presence in the sickroom had an invariably cheering effect.
He was middle-aged, with a quiet pleasant voice.
He listened carefully to Superintendent Harper and replied to his questions with gentle precision.
Harper said, "Then I can take it, Doctor Metcalf, that what I was told by Mrs Jefferson was substantially correct?"
"Yes, Mr Jefferson's health is in a precarious state.
For several years now the man has been driving himself ruthlessly. In his determination to live like other men he has lived at a far greater pace than the normal man of his age.
He has refused to rest, to take things easy, to go slow, or any of the other phrases with which I and his other medical advisers have tendered to him.
The result is that the man is an over-worked engine.
Heart, lungs, blood-pressure - they're all overstrained."
"You say Mr Jefferson has resolutely refused to listen?"
"Yes.
I don't know that I blame him.
It's not what I say to my patients, superintendent, but a man may as well wear out as rust out.
A lot of my colleagues do that, and take it from me, it's not a bad way.
In a place like Danemouth one sees most of the other thing.
Invalids clinging to life, terrified of over-exerting themselves, terrified of a breath of drafty air, of a stray germ, of an injudicious meal."
"I expect that's true enough," said Superintendent Harper. "What it amounts to, then, is this: Conway Jefferson is strong enough, physically speaking or I suppose I mean muscularly speaking. Just what can he do in the active line, by the way?"
"He has immense strength in his arms and shoulders.
He was a very powerful man before his accident. He is extremely dexterous in his handling of his wheeled chair, and with the aid of crutches he can move himself about a room from his bed to the chair, for instance."
"Isn't it possible for a man injured as Mr Jefferson was to have artificial legs?"
"Not in his case.
There was a spine injury."
"I see. Let me sum up again. Jefferson is strong and fit in the muscular sense. He feels well and all that?"
Metcalf nodded. "But his heart is in a bad condition; any over-strain or exertion, or a shock or a sudden fright, and he might pop off.
Is that it?"
"More or less. Over-exertion is killing him slowly because he won't give in when he feels tired. That aggravates the cardiac condition.
It is unlikely that exertion would kill him suddenly.
But a sudden shock or fright might easily do so.
That is why I expressly warned his family."
Superintendent Harper said slowly,
"But in actual fact a shock didn't kill him. I mean, doctor, that there couldn't have been a much worse shock than this business, and he's still alive."
Doctor Metcalf shrugged his shoulders.