Scripps was pale from pain, but his grit was indomitable. He choked back a groan and said:
"Darling? Colonel Darling? I think I know him."
Scripps relapsed into silence again. The wound still hurt abominably.
"Darling distinguished himself at Spion Kop, you know," Mayhan gave tribute as he unwound some iodoform gauze. "Fine chap, the colonel."
"Know him well?" inquired the surgeon guardedly.
Scripps had his lip in his teeth again, and it was bleeding; but he let it go.
"Better than he knows me, apparently," he said with a grim smile.
"I'm sure he won't. He won't know who Scripps is from Adam."
Mayhan, mollified now in a measure by the man's fortitude, used the cocain that he had denied him at first and proceeded with the dressing.
"If you're so keen on telling the colonel, just say you've seen Nibbetts," the brusk one suggested.
"I'll remember. I'll probably see him to-night at the club. He may look you up at once, if you don't mind. Fine fellow, the colonel."
The relief from the cocain was instantaneous, but Scripps's manner showed no change.
"That's twice you said that," he rumbled. "There are some that don't agree with you."
"I know," returned Mayhan. "Some never agree with any one. That's where the word disagreeable comes from."
Scripps made no retort, and the dressing continued in silence. When it was finished and Mayhan was repacking his kit, he ventured: "Nibbetts, you said, didn't you?"
The merest movement of the tawny, leonine head gave assent.
"I'll tell him." And then the surgeon took a closer look. Scripps's bearded chin was on his breast. His face, in spite of its tan, was deathly white. "By the way," he added, "you'd better have a brandy peg. You've lost some blood, you know, and--"
"That's my business," the other interrupted roughly. "You're a sawbones, not a medical man. And a sawbones _sans merci_, at that. Otherwise you'd have begun with the cocain, instead of ending with it."
Mayhan turned away without another word and made a wry face behind the savage's back. Two minutes later he was down the stairs and in the hotel porch, where he was confronted by young Andrews.
"I saw you go in," lied the latter nervously. "And I've been waiting for you. What happened? I've a reason for asking."