Chapter 18 | Knotting Up Loose Ends | The Bag of Diamonds

It had been the doctor’s last act before he admitted his assailants. As if inspired by a fear that his patient’s excited utterances might be true, and urged by the risk of leaving so valuable a treasure unprotected, he had taken the bag, and slipped it in a place not likely to be examined, though he never recovered sufficiently to recall what he had done.

As to the two men who had visited the surgery that night, by a strange want of scent on the part of the sleuth-hounds of the law they were never found; one reason being that, with the cash they found in the belt Mark Heath wore, they had made their way back to the Cape.

The house in Ramillies Street remained unchanged in aspect so that after a time, under the old doctor’s name, a new plate was affixed, bearing that of his son.

The red light shone out every night, and the plate upon the door glistened in the sunshine, such little as came into the street, after Bob had been over the said plates with rotten-stone and oil, prior to “cleaning hisself,” as he called it, and donning his new smart livery, ready to admit the patients who came; but though James Poynter was often really sick, he sought advice there no more.

That red light shone out every night with a dull glare across the road; but whenever as ordinary constable, or later on as sergeant, John Whyley’s duties took him round that way, he always stopped, and rolled his head in his stock with a sapient shake.

“Ah!” he invariably said; “that there just was fog!”