Only in return you must tell me absolutely
frankly if you have seen any grounds for suspecting O'Brien of anything
treasonable--anything whatever."
The doctor shook his head emphatically.
"The only plotting the man was capable of was to get liquor. Otherwise he
was just a gas bag. I've seen him too often in a state when he'd have
given everything away, if there had been anything to give."
And then I remembered the pocket book.
"But this entry!" I cried. "How do you explain that?"
The doctor looked at it again and his bewilderment was obviously sincere.
"I'm frankly d----d if I can make head or tail of it," he said. "Bolton
must have got on the wrong scent; that's the only thing I can imagine."
And then, like a sharp smack in the face, Jean's reading of that entry
came back to me. Could she have guessed right after all? It looked
uncommonly like it.
"And yet," I said to myself, "it's a great thing to have tested the other
hypothesis."
In fact, if one is not built to be easily dispirited, well, it is not
easy to dispirit one. I looked at the doctor, and something in my
expression seemed to make him smile. When he smiled he looked so pleasant
that my conscience smote me. I told myself he certainly deserved some
reparation for the ordeal I had put him through.
"Doctor," I said, "I am devilish thirsty myself after this bout.
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