“Don’t talk such nonsense to me, sir!  Every one knows that any serious case can be safely removed in a proper ambulance.  The whole thing is monstrous!  By G—­d, sir, what law obliges me to give up my house to a man I know nothing about, and a whole tribe of hangers-on, besides?”

And, fairly beside himself, Melrose struck a carved chest, standing within reach, a blow which made the china and glass objects huddled upon it ring again.

“Well,” said Undershaw slowly, “there is such a thing as—­a law of humanity.  But I imagine if you turn out that man against my advice, and he dies on the road to hospital, that some other kind of law might have something to say to it.”

“You refuse!”

The shout made the little doctor, always mindful of his patient, look behind him, to see that the door was closed.

“He cannot be moved for three or four days,” was the firm reply.  “The chances are that he would collapse on the road.  But as soon as ever the thing is possible you shall be relieved of him.  I can easily find accommodation for him at Pengarth.  At present he is suffering from very severe concussion.  I hope there is not actual brain lesion—­but there may be.  And, if so, to move him now would be simply to destroy his chance of recovery.”

The two men confronted each other, the unreasonable fury of the one met by the scientific conscience of the other.  Melrose was dumfounded by the mingled steadiness and audacity of the little doctor.  His mad self-will, his pride of class and wealth, surviving through all his eccentricities, found it unbearable that Undershaw should show no real compunction whatever for what he had done, nay, rather, a quiet conviction that, rage as he might, the owner of Threlfall Tower would have to submit.  It was indeed the suggestion in the doctor’s manner, of an unexplained compulsion behind—­ethical or humanitarian—­not to be explained, but simply to be taken for granted, which perhaps infuriated Melrose more than anything else.

Nevertheless, as he still glared at his enemy, Melrose suddenly realized that the man was right.  He would have to submit.  For many reasons, he could not—­at this moment in particular—­excite any fresh hue and cry which might bring the whole countryside on his back.  Unless the doctor were lying, and he could get another of the craft to certify it, he would have to put up—­for the very minimum of time—­with the intolerable plague of this invasion.

He turned away abruptly, took a turn up and down the only free space the room contained, and returned.

“Perhaps you will kindly inform me, sir—­since you have been good enough to take this philanthropic business on yourself—­or rather to shovel it on to me”—­each sarcastic word was flung like a javelin at the doctor—­“whether you know anything whatever of this youth you are thrusting upon me?  I don’t imagine that he has dropped from the skies!  If you don’t know, and haven’t troubled yourself to find out, I shall set the police on at once, track his friends, and hand him over!”