Birds of Prey by M.E. Braddon

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"I think if--if you have no objection, I should like to see another
doctor, Mr. Sheldon," she said one day, with considerable embarrassment
of manner. She feared to offend her host by any doubt of his skill.
"You see--you--you are so much employed with teeth--and--of course you
know I am quite assured of your talent--but don't you think that a
doctor who had more experience in fever cases might bring Tom round
quicker? He has been ill so long now; and really he doesn't seem to get
any better."

Philip Sheldon shrugged his shoulders.

"As you please, my dear Mrs. Halliday," he said carelessly; "I don't
wish to press my services upon you. It is quite a matter of friendship,
you know, and I shall not profit sixpence by my attendance on poor old
Tom. Call in another doctor, by all means, if you think fit to do so;
but, of course, in that event, I must withdraw from the case. The man
you call in may be clever, or he may be stupid and ignorant. It's all a
chance, when one doesn't know one's man; and I really can't advise you
upon that point, for I know nothing of the London profession."

Georgy looked alarmed. This was a new view of the subject. She had
fancied that all regular practitioners were clever, and had only
doubted Mr. Sheldon because he was not a regular practitioner. But how
if she were to withdraw her husband from the hands of a clever man to
deliver him into the care of an ignorant pretender, simply because she
was over-anxious for his recovery?

"I always am foolishly anxious about things," she thought.

And then she looked piteously at Mr. Sheldon, and said, "What do you
think I ought to do? Pray tell me. He has eaten no breakfast again this
morning; and even the cup of tea which I persuaded him to take seemed
to disagree with him. And then there is that dreadful sore throat which
torments him so. What ought I to do, Mr. Sheldon?"

"Whatever seems best to yourself, Mrs. Halliday," answered the dentist
earnestly. "It is a subject upon, which I cannot pretend to advise you.
It is a matter of feeling rather than of reason, and it is a matter
which you yourself must determine. If I knew any man whom I could
honestly recommend to you, it would be another affair; but I don't.
Tom's illness is the simplest thing in the world, and I feel myself
quite competent to pull him through it, without fuss or bother; but if
you think otherwise, pray put me out of the question. There's one fact,
however, of which I'm bound to remind you. Like many fine big stalwart
fellows of his stamp, your husband is as nervous as a hysterical woman;
and if you call in a strange doctor, who will pull long faces, and put
on the professional solemnity, the chances are that he'll take alarm,
and do himself more mischief in a few hours than your new adviser can
undo in as many weeks."

There was a little pause after this. Georgy's opinions, and suspicions,
and anxieties were alike vague; and this last suggestion of Mr.
Sheldon's put things in a new and alarming light. She was really
anxious about her husband, but she had been accustomed all her life to
accept the opinion of other people in preference to her own.

"Do you really think that Tom will soon be well and strong again?" she
asked presently.

"If I thought otherwise, I should be the first to advise other
measures. However, my dear Mrs. Halliday, call in some one else, for
your own satisfaction."

"No," said Georgy, sighing plaintively, "it might frighten Tom. You are
quite right, Mr. Sheldon; he is very nervous, and the idea that I was
alarmed might alarm him. I'll trust in you. Pray try to bring him round
again. You will try, won't you?" she asked, in the childish pleading
way which was peculiar to her.

The dentist was searching for something in the drawer of a table, and
his back was turned on the anxious questioner.

"You may depend upon it, I'll do my best, Mrs. Halliday," he answered,
still busy at the drawer. Mr. Sheldon the younger had paid many visits
to Fitzgeorge-street during Tom Halliday's illness. George and Tom had
been the Damon and Pythias of Barlingford; and George seemed really
distressed when he found his friend changed for the worse. The changes
in the invalid were so puzzling, the alternations from better to worse
and from worse to better so frequent, that fear could take no hold upon
the minds of the patient's friends. It seemed such a very slight affair
this low fever, though sufficiently inconvenient to the patient
himself, who suffered a good deal from thirst and sickness, and showed
an extreme disinclination for food, all which symptoms Mr. Sheldon said
were the commonest and simplest features of a very mild attack of
bilious fever, which would leave Tom a better man than it had found
him.

There had been several pleasant little card-parties during the earlier
stages of Mr. Halliday's illness; but within the last week the patient
had been too low and weak for cards--too weak to read the newspaper, or
even to bear having it read to him. When George came to look at his old
friend--"to cheer you up a little, old fellow, you know," and so on--he
found Tom, for the time being, past all capability of being cheered,
even by the genial society of his favourite jolly good fellow, or by
tidings of a steeplechase in Yorkshire, in which a neighbour had gone
to grief over a double fence.

"That chap upstairs seems rather queerish," George had said to his
brother, after finding Tom lower and weaker than usual. "He's in a bad
way, isn't he, Phil?"

"No; there's nothing serious the matter with him. He's rather low
to-night, that's all."

"Rather low!" echoed George Sheldon. "He seems to me so very low, that
he can't sink much lower without going to the bottom of his grave. I'd
call some one in, if I were you."

The dentist shrugged his shoulders, and made a little contemptuous
noise with his lips.

"If you knew as much of doctors as I do, you wouldn't be in any hurry
to trust a friend to the mercy of one," he said carelessly. "Don't you
alarm yourself about Tom. He's right enough. He's been in a state of
chronic over-eating and over-drinking for the last ten years, and this
bilious fever will be the making of him."

"Will it?" said George doubtfully; and then there followed a little
pause, during which the brothers happened to look at each other
furtively, and happened to surprise each other in the act.

"I don't know about over-eating or drinking," said George presently;
"but something has disagreed with Tom Halliday, that's very evident."

CHAPTER V.

THE LETTER FROM THE "ALLIANCE" OFFICE.

Upon the evening of the day on which Mrs. Halliday and the dentist had
discussed the propriety of calling in a strange doctor, George Sheldon
came again to see his sick friend. He was quicker to perceive the
changes in the invalid than the members of the household, who saw him
daily and hourly, and he perceived a striking change for the worse
to-night.

He took care, however, to suffer no evidence of alarm or surprise to
appear in the sick chamber. He talked to his friend in the usual cheery
way; sat by the bedside for half an hour; did his best to arouse Tom
from a kind of stupid lethargy, and to encourage Mrs. Halliday, who
shared the task of nursing her husband with brisk Nancy Woolper, an
invaluable creature in a sick-room. But he failed in both attempts; the
dull apathy of the invalid was not to be dispelled by the most genial
companionship, and Georgy's spirits had been sinking lower and lower
all day as her fears increased.

She would fain have called in a strange doctor--she would fain have
sought for comfort and consolation from some new quarter. But she was
afraid of offending Philip Sheldon; and she was afraid of alarming her
husband. So she waited, and watched, and struggled against that
ever-increasing anxiety. Had not Mr. Sheldon made light of his
friend's malady, and what motive could he have for deceiving her?

A breakfast-cup full of beef-tea stood on the little table by the
bedside, and had been standing there for hours untouched.

"I did take such pains to make it strong and clear," said Mrs. Woolper
regretfully, as she came to the little table during a tidying process,
"and poor dear Mr. Halliday hasn't taken so much as a spoonful. It
won't be fit for him to-morrow, so as I haven't eaten a morsel of
dinner, what with the hurry and anxiety and one thing and another, I'll
warm up the beef-tea for my supper. There's not a blessed thing in the
house; for you don't eat nothing, Mrs. Halliday; and as to cooking a
dinner for Mr. Sheldon, you'd a deal better go and throw your victuals
out into the gutter, for then there'd be a chance of stray dogs
profiting by 'em, at any rate."

"Phil is off his feed, then; eh, Nancy?" said George.

"I should rather think he is, Mr. George. I roasted a chicken yesterday
for him and Mrs. Halliday, and I don't think they eat an ounce between,
them; and such a lovely tender young thing as it was too--done to a
turn--with bread sauce and a little bit of sea-kale. One invalid makes
another, that's certain. I never saw your brother so upset as he is
now, Mr, George, in all his life.

"No?" answered George Sheldon thoughtfully; "Phil isn't generally one
of your sensitive sort."

The invalid was sleeping heavily during this conversation. George stood
by the bed for some minutes looking down at the altered face, and then
turned to leave the room.

"Good night, Mrs. Halliday," he said; "I hope I shall find poor old Tom
a shade better when I look round to-morrow."

"I am sure I hope so," Georgy answered mournfully.

She was sitting by the window looking out at the darkening western sky,
in which the last lurid glimmer of a stormy sunset was fading against a
background of iron gray.

This quiet figure by the window, the stormy sky, and ragged hurrying
clouds without, the dusky chamber with all its dismally significant
litter of medicine-bottles, made a gloomy picture--a picture which the
man who looked upon it carried in his mind for many years after that
night.

George Sheldon and Nancy Woolper left the room together, the
Yorkshirewoman carrying a tray of empty phials and glasses, and amongst
them the cup of beef-tea.

"He seems in a bad way to-night, Nancy," said George, with a backward
jerk of his head towards the sick-chamber.

"He is in a bad way, Mr. George," answered the woman gravely, "let Mr.
Philip think what he will. I don't want to say a word against your
brother's knowledge, for such a steady studious gentleman as he is had
need be clever; and if I was ill myself, I'd trust my life to him
freely; for I have heard Barlingford folks say that my master's advice
is as good as any regular doctor's, and that there's very little your
regular doctors know that he doesn't know as well or better. But for
all that, Mr. George, I don't think he understands Mr. Halliday's case
quite as clear as he might."

"Do you think Tom's in any danger?"

"I won't say that, Mr. George; but I think he gets worse instead of
getting better."

"Humph!" muttered George; "if Halliday were to go off the hooks, Phil
would have a good chance of getting a rich wife."

"Don't say that, Mr. George," exclaimed the Yorkshirewoman
reproachfully; "don't even think of such a thing while that poor man
lies at death's door. I'm sure Mr. Sheldon hasn't any thoughts of that
kind. He told me before Mr. and Mrs. Halliday came to town that he and
Miss Georgy had forgotten all about past times."

"O, if Phil said so, that alters the case. Phil is one of your blunt
outspoken fellows, and always says what he means," said George Sheldon.
And then he went downstairs, leaving Nancy to follow him at her leisure
with the tray of jingling cups and glasses. He went down through the
dusk, smiling to himself, as if he had just given utterance to some
piece of intense humour. He went to look for his brother, whom he found
in the torture-chamber, busied with some mysterious process in
connection with a lump of plaster-of-pans, which seemed to be the model
of ruined battlements in the Gothic style. The dentist looked up as
George entered the room, and did not appear particularly delighted by
the appearance of that gentleman.

"Well," said Mr. Sheldon the younger, "busy as usual? Patients seem to
be looking up."

"Patients be----toothless to the end of time!" cried Philip, with a
savage laugh. "No, I'm not working to order; I'm only experimentalising."

"You're rather fond of experiments, I think, Phil," said George,
seating himself near the table at which his brother was working under
the glare of the gas. The dentist looked very pale and haggard in the
gas-light, and his eyes had the dull sunken appearance induced by
prolonged sleeplessness. George sat watching his brother thoughtfully
for some time, and then produced his cigar-case. "You don't mind my
smoke here?" he asked, as he lighted a cigar.

"Not at all. You are very welcome to sit here, if it amuses you to see
me working at the cast of a lower jaw."

"O, that's a lower jaw, is it? It looks like the fragment of some
castle-keep. No, Phil, I don't care about watching you work. I want to
talk to you seriously."

"About that fellow upstairs--poor old Tom. He and I were great
cronies, you know, at home. He's in a very bad way,

"Is he? You seem to be turning physician all at once, George. I
shouldn't have thought your grubbing among county histories, and
tattered old pedigrees, and parish registers had given you so deep an
insight into the science of medicine!" said the dentist in a sneering
tone.

"I don't know anything of medicine; but I know enough to be sure that
Tom Halliday is about as bad as he can be. What mystifies me is, that
he doesn't seem to have had anything particular the matter with him.
There he lies, getting worse and worse every day, without any specific
ailment. It's a strange illness, Philip."

"I don't see anything strange in it."

"Don't you? Don't you think the surrounding circumstances are strange?
Here is this man comes to your house hale and hearty; and all of a
sudden he falls ill, and gets lower and lower every day, without
anybody being able to say why or wherefore."

"That's not true, George. Everybody in this house knows the cause of
Tom Halliday's illness. He came home in wet clothes, and insisted on
keeping them on. He caught a cold; which resulted in low fever. There
is the whole history and mystery of the affair."

"That's simple enough, certainly. But if I were you, Phil I'd call in
another doctor."

"That is Mrs. Halliday's business," answered the dentist coolly; "if
she doubts my skill, she is free to call in whom she pleases. And now
you may as well drop the subject, George. I've had enough anxiety about
this man's illness, and I don't want to be worried by you."

After this there was a little conversation upon general matters, but
the talk dragged and languished drearily, and George Sheldon rose to
depart directly he had finished his cigar.

"Good night, Philip!" he said; "if ever you get a stroke of good luck,
I hope you'll stand something handsome to me."

This remark had no particular relevance to anything that had been said
that night by the two men; yet Philip Sheldon seemed in nowise
astonished by it.

"If things ever _do_ take a turn for the better with me, you'll find me
a good friend, George," he said gravely; and then Mr. Sheldon the
younger bade him good night, and went out into Fitzgeorge-street.

He paused for a moment at the corner of the street to look back at his
brother's house. He could see the lighted windows of the invalid's
chamber, and it was at those he looked.

"Poor Tom," he said to himself, "poor Tom! We were great cronies in the
old times, and have had many a pleasant evening together!"

Mr. Sheldon the dentist sat up till the small hours that night, as
he had done for many nights lately. He finished his work in the
torture-chamber, and went up to the common sitting-room, or
drawing-room as it was called by courtesy, a little before midnight.
The servants had gone to bed, for there was no regular nightly watch
in the apartment of the invalid. Mrs. Halliday lay on a sofa in her
husband's room, and Nancy Woolper slept in an adjoining apartment,
always wakeful and ready if help of any kind should be wanted.

The house was very quiet just now. Philip Sheldon walked up and down
the room, thinking; and the creaking of his boots sounded unpleasantly
loud to his ears. He stopped before the fireplace, after having walked
to and fro some time, and began to examine some letters that lay upon
the mantelpiece. They were addressed to Mr. Halliday, and had been
forwarded from Yorkshire. The dentist took them up, one by one, and
deliberately examined them. They were all business letters, and most of
them bore country post-marks. But there was one which had been, in the
first instance, posted from London and this letter Mr. Sheldon examined
with especial attention.

It was a big, official-looking document, and embossed upon the adhesive
envelope appeared the crest and motto of the Alliance Insurance Office.

"I wonder whether that's all square," thought Mr. Sheldon, as he turned
the envelope about in his hands, staring at it absently. "I ought to
make sure of that. The London postmark is nearly three weeks old." He
pondered for some moments, and then went to the cupboard in which he
kept the materials wherewith to replenish or to make a fire. Here he
found a little tin tea-kettle, in which he was in the habit of boiling
water for occasional friendly glasses of grog. He poured some water
from a bottle on the sideboard into this kettle, set fire to a bundle
of wood, and put the kettle on the blazing sticks. After having done
this he searched for a tea-cup, succeeded in finding one, and then
stood watching for the boiling of the water. He had not long to wait;
the water boiled furiously before the wood was burned out, and Mr.
Sheldon filled the tea-cup standing on the table. Then he put the
insurance-letter over the cup, with the seal downwards, and left it so
while he resumed his walk. After walking up and down for about ten
minutes he went back to the table and took up the letter. The adhesive
envelope opened easily, and Mr. Sheldon, by this ingenious stratagem,
made himself master of his friend's business.

The "Alliance" letter was nothing more than a notice to the effect that
the half-yearly premium for insuring the sum of three thousand pounds
on the life of Thomas Halliday would be due on such a day, after which
there would be twenty-one days' grace, at the end of which time the
policy would become void, unless the premium had been duly paid.

Mr. Halliday's letters had been suffered to accumulate during the last
fortnight. The letters forwarded from Yorkshire had been detained some
time, as they had been sent first to Hyley Farm, now in the possession
of the new owner, and then to Barlingford, to the house of Georgy's
mother, who had kept them upwards of a week, in daily expectation of
her son-in-law's return. It was only on the receipt of a letter from
Georgy, containing the tidings of her husband's illness, that Mr.
Halliday's letters had been sent to London. Thus it came about that the
twenty-one days of grace were within four-and-twenty hours of expiring
when Philip Sheldon opened his friend's letter.

"This is serious," muttered the dentist, as he stood deliberating with
the open letter in his hand; "there are three thousand pounds depending
on that man's power to write a check!"

After a few minutes' reflection, he folded the letter and resealed it
very carefully.

"It wouldn't do to press the matter upon him to-night," he thought; "I
must wait till to-morrow morning, come what may."

CHAPTER VI.

MR. BURKHAM'S UNCERTAINTIES.

The next morning dawned gray and pale and chill, after the manner of
early spring mornings, let them ripen into never such balmy days; and
with the dawn Nancy Woolper came into the invalid's chamber, more wan
and sickly of aspect than the morning itself.

Mrs. Halliday started from an uneasy slumber.

"What's the matter, Nancy?" she asked with considerable alarm. She had
known the woman ever since her childhood, and she was startled this
morning by some indefinable change in her manner and appearance. The
hearty old woman, whose face had been like a hard rosy apple shrivelled
and wrinkled by long keeping, had now a white and ghastly look which
struck terror to Georgy's breast. She who was usually so brisk of
manner and sharp of speech, had this morning a strange subdued tone and
an unnatural calmness of demeanour. "What is the matter, Nancy?" Mrs.
Halliday repeated, getting up from her sofa.

"Don't be frightened, Miss Georgy," answered the old woman, who was apt
to forget that Tom Halliday's wife had ever ceased to be Georgy
Cradock; "don't be frightened, my dear. I haven't been very well all
night,--and--and--I've been, worrying myself about Mr. Halliday. If I
were you, I'd call in another doctor. Never mind what Mr. Philip says.
He may be mistaken, you know, clever as he is. There's no telling. Take
my advice, Miss Georgy, and call in another doctor--directly--
directly," repeated the old woman, seizing Mrs. Halliday's wrist with a
passionate energy, as if to give emphasis to her words. Poor timid
Georgy shrank from her with terror.

"You frighten me, Nancy," she whispered; "do you think that Tom is so
much worse? You have not been with him all night; and he has been
sleeping very quietly. What makes you so anxious this morning?"

"Never mind that, Miss Georgy. You get another doctor, that's all; get
another doctor at once. Mr. Sheldon is a light sleeper. I'll go to his
room and tell him you've set your heart upon having fresh advice; if
you'll only bear me out afterwards."

"Yes, yes; go by all means," exclaimed Mrs. Halliday, only too ready to
take alarm under the influence of a stronger mind, and eager to act
when supported by another person.

Nancy Woolper went to her master's room. He must have been sleeping
very lightly, if he was sleeping at all; for he was broad awake the
next minute after his housekeeper's light knock had sounded on the
door. In less than five minutes he came out of his room half-dressed.
Nancy had told him that Mrs. Halliday had taken fresh alarm about her
husband, and wished for further advice.

"She sent you to tell me that?" asked Philip.

"Yes."

"And when does she want this new doctor called in?"

"Immediately, if possible."

It was seven o'clock by this time, and the morning was brightening a
little.

"Very well," said Mr. Sheldon; "her wishes shall be attended to
directly. Heaven forbid that I should stand between my old friend and
any chance of his speedy recovery! If a stranger can bring him round
quicker than I can, let the stranger come."

* * * * *

Mr. Sheldon was not slow to obey Mrs. Halliday's behest. He was
departing on his quest breakfastless, when Nancy Woolper met him in the
hall with a cup of tea. He accepted the cup almost mechanically from
her hand, and took it into the parlour, whither Nancy followed him.
Then for the first time he perceived that change in his housekeeper's
face which had so startled Georgina Halliday. The change was somewhat
modified now; but still the Nancy Woolper of to-day was not the Nancy
Woolper of yesterday.

"You're looking very queer, Nancy," said the dentist, gravely
scrutinising the woman's face with his bright penetrating eyes. "Are
you ill"

"Well, Mr. Philip, I have been rather queer all night,--sickish and
faintish-like."

"Ah, you've been over-fatiguing yourself in the sick-room, I daresay.
Take care you don't knock yourself up." "No; it's not that, Mr. Philip.
There's not many can stand hard work better than I can. It's not _that_
as made me ill. I took something last night that disagreed with me."

"More fool you," said Mr. Sheldon curtly; "you ought to know better
than to ill-use your digestive powers at your age. What was it? Hard
cold meat and preternaturally green pickles, I suppose; or something of
that kind."

"No, sir; it was only a drop of beef-tea that I made for poor Mr.
Halliday. And that oughtn't to have disagreed with a baby, you know,
sir."

"Oughtn't it?" cried the dentist disdainfully. "That's a little bit of
vulgar ignorance, Mrs. Woolper. I suppose it was stuff that had been
taken up to Mr. Halliday."

"Yes, Mr. Philip; you took it up with your own hands."

"Ah, to be sure; so I did. Very well, then, Mrs. Woolper, if you knew
as much about atmospheric influences as I do, you'd know that food
which has been standing for hours in the pestilential air of a
fever-patient's room isn't fit for anybody to eat. The stuff made you
sick, I suppose."

"Yes, sir; sick to my very heart," answered the Yorkshirewoman, with a
strange mournfulness in her voice.

"Let that be a warning to you, then. Don't take anything more that
comes down from the sick-room."

"I don't think there'll be any chance of my doing that long, sir."

"What do you mean?"

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