The Box with Broken Seals. E. Phillips Oppenheim
yet."
There was a brief silence. Then she turned her head a little, leaning it still on the back of the chair but watching him as she spoke.
"I have seen my patient," she told him. "I have also had some conversation with the doctor."
"Well?"
"I am beginning to think," she continued, "that you must be a philanthropist."
"Why?"
"You hinted," she went on, "that your friend was in poor circumstances. You did not tell me, though, that you were paying the whole expenses of this trip, just so that the man should see his home and his family before he died."
"I told you that the care of him was a charge upon me," Jocelyn Thew reminded her. "That amounts to the same thing, doesn't it? I was clever enough, anyhow, to get a good nurse at a small fee."
"I am not at all sure," she replied, "that I shall not charge you something outrageous. You are probably a millionaire."
"Whatever you charge me," he promised, "I shall try to pay."
The two journalists, refreshed and encouraged by their libation, strolled past arm in arm.
"Queer sort of voyage, this, for a man on the point of death," the Westerner observed. "They brought a chap on here, an hour before we sailed, in an ambulance, with a doctor and a hospital nurse. Had to be carried every foot of the way."
"What's wrong with him?" the other enquired.
"He was only operated upon for appendicitis a fortnight ago, and they say that he has angina pectoris amongst other complications. They brought him straight from the hospital. Seems he's crazy to get back to England to die."
The two men passed out of hearing. Jocelyn flicked the ash from the cigarette which he had lighted.
"Sounds a queer sort of story, the way they tell it," he observed, glancing at his companion.
"Oh, I don't know," she replied. "Men have done this sort of thing before—but it isn't often," she went on, "that a man has done it for the sake of another man."
He smiled.
"You have the old-fashioned idea of man's devotion to woman. Can't you believe that there may be ties between two men stronger even than between a man and the woman he loves?"
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