"You mean to stand by me in this, don't you?" he asked Mr. Burkham.
"Good. Then you must go to Dr. Jedd instantly. Tell him all you know--Tom Halliday's death; the symptoms of Charlotte's decline, as you have heard them from me--_everything_; and let him hold himself in readiness to start for Hastings directly he hears from or sees me. I am going to a man who of all men can tell me how to deal with Philip Sheldon. I shall try to be in Burlington Row in an hour from this time; but in any case you will wait there till I come. I suppose, in a desperate case like this, Dr. Jedd will put aside all less urgent work?"
"I trust to you to secure his sympathy," said Valentine.
He was in the darksome entrance-hall by this time. Mr. Burkham followed, and opened the door for him.
"Have no fear of me," he said. "Good bye."
The two men shook hands with a grip significant as masonic sign-manual. It meant on the one part hearty co-operation, on the other implicit confidence. In the next moment Valentine sprang into the cab.
"King's Road--entrance to Gray's Inn, and drive like mad!" he shouted to the driver. The hansom rattled across the stones, dashed round corners, struck consternation to scudding children in pinafores, all but annihilated more than one perambulator, and in less than ten minutes after leaving Mr. Burkham's door, ground against the kerbstone before the little gate of Gray's Inn.
"God grant that George Sheldon may be at home!" Valentine said to himself, as he hurried towards that gentleman's office. George Sheldon was at home. In this fight against time, Mr. Hawkehurst had so far found the odds in his favour.
"Bless my soul!" exclaimed the lawyer, looking up from his desk, as Valentine appeared on the threshold of the door, pale and breathless; "to what do I owe the unusual honour of a visit from Mr. Hawkehurst? I thought that rising _littérateur_ had cut all old acquaintances, and gone in for the upper circles."
"I have come to you on a matter of life and death, George Sheldon," said Valentine; "this is no time to talk of why I haven't been to you before. When you and I last met, you advised me to beware of your brother Philip. It wasn't the first, or the second, or the third time that you so warned me. And now speak out like an honest man, and tell me what you meant by that warning? For God's sake, speak plainly this time."