Meanwhile Alan wired Tony Holiday every day as to his patient’s condition though he wrote not at all and said nothing in his wires of himself.  Letters from Tony were now beginning to arrive, letters full of eager gratitude and love for Alan and concern for Dick.

And one day Dick’s mind got suddenly very clear.  He was alone with the nurse at the time, the sympathetic American one whom he liked better and was less afraid of than he was of the stolid, inexorable British lady.  And he began to ask questions, many questions and very definite ones.  He knew at last precisely what it was he wanted to know.

He got a good deal of information though by no means all he sought.  He found out that he had been taken desperately ill, that he had been summarily removed from his lodging place because of the owner’s superstitious dread of contagion into the miserable little thatch roofed hut in which he had nearly died thanks to the mal-practice of the rascally, drunken doctor and the ignorant half-breed nurse.  He learned how Alan Massey had suddenly appeared and taken things in his own hands, discovered that in a nutshell the fact was he owed his life to the other-man.  But why?  That was what he had to find out from Alan Massey himself.

The next day when Alan came in and the nurse went out he asked his question.

“That is easy,” said Alan grimly.  “I came on Tony’s account.”

Dick winced.  Of course that was it.  Tony had sent Massey.  He was here as her emissary, naturally, no doubt as her accepted lover.  It was kind.  Tony was always kind but he wished she had not done it.  He did not want to have his life saved by the man who was going to marry Tony Holiday.  He rather thought he did not want his life saved anyway by anybody.  He wished they hadn’t done it.

“I—­I am much obliged to you and to Tony,” he said a little stiffly.  “I fear it—­it was hardly worth the effort.”  His eyes closed wearily.

“Tony didn’t send me though,” observed Alan Massey as if he had read the other’s thought.  “I sent myself.”

Dick’s eyes opened.

“That is odd if it is true,” he said slowly.

Alan dropped into a chair near the bed.

“It is odd,” he admitted.  “But it happens to be true.  It came about simply enough.  When Tony heard you were sick she went crazy, swore she was coming down here in spite of us all to take care of you.  Then Miss Clay’s child died and she had to go on the boards.  You can imagine what it meant to her—­the two things coming at once.  She played that night—­swept everything as you’d know she would—­got ’em all at her feet.”

Dick nodded, a faint flash of pleasure in his eyes.  Down and out as he was he could still be glad to hear of Tony’s triumph.

“She wanted to come to you,” went on Alan.  “She let me come instead because she couldn’t.  I came for—­for her sake.”

Dick nodded.

“Naturally—­for her sake,” he said.  “I could hardly have expected you to come for mine.  I would hardly have expected it in any case.”