into Mr. Simpkins' food. She'll get herself into trouble if she does." 

 

 

 CHAPTER VI. 

 Meldon opened the door of Mr. Doyle's private sitting-room without knocking and walked in. The hotel keeper and Dr. O'Donoghue were sitting at opposite ends of the table, with a bottle of whisky and a jug of water between them. Doyle, who was placed with his back to the door, spoke without looking round. 

 "Didn't I tell you, Sabina Gallagher," he said, "that if you came into this room, interrupting me and the doctor, I'd cut the two ears off you, and send you back to your mother with them in a box in the well of the car? Did I tell you that or did I not? And now nothing will do you but to fling open the door as if the Lord-Lieutenant and the rest of them playboys beyond in Dublin Castle was—" 

 The expression of Dr. O'Donoghue's face made Mr. Doyle pause. He turned and saw Meldon standing on the threshold. 

 "Be damn!" he said, "if it isn't Mr. Meldon. The Major was telling me last week he was expecting you. You're looking well, so you are. England agrees with you." 

 "I can't say as much for you," said Meldon.  "You're getting fat. You ought to take more exercise. Why don't you start a golf links? It would do you all the good in the world, and be an attraction to the hotel besides." 

 "If I'm putting on flesh," said Doyle, "it's a queer thing, for the life's fair tormented out of me." 

 "Simpkins, I suppose," said Meldon. 

 "The same," said Doyle.  "The like of that man for making trouble in a place I never seen; no, nor nobody else." 

 "I hear," said Meldon, "that the doctor's thinking of poisoning him." 

 "Whoever told you that told you a lie," said Dr. O'Donoghue; "not but what—" 

 "Myself and the doctor," said Doyle, "was making up plans when you come in on us. We was thinking of what you might call an ambuscade, worked so as we'd get the better of him without his being able to take the law of us; and he's mighty fond of the law, that same gentleman—too fond." 

 "If I can be 

 Prev. P 38/202 next