“Why, you great donkey,” he shouted, in an ear-shattering whisper, “that’s not one of the patients at all.  That’s one of the doctors.”

Evan looked back at the leering head with the long-pointed beard and repeated the word inquiringly:  “One of the doctors?”

“Oh, you know what I mean,” said Turnbull, impatiently.  “The medical authorities of the place.”

Evan was still staring back curiously at the beaming and bearded creature behind him.

“The mad doctors,” said Turnbull, shortly.

“Quite so,” said MacIan.

After a rather restless silence Turnbull plucked MacIan by the elbow and pulled him aside.

“For goodness sake,” he said, “don’t offend this fellow; he may be as mad as ten hatters, if you like, but he has us between his finger and thumb.  This is the very time he appointed to talk with us about our—­well, our exeat.”

“But what can it matter?” asked the wondering MacIan.  “He can’t keep us in the asylum.  We’re not mad.”

“Jackass!” said Turnbull, heartily, “of course we’re not mad.  Of course, if we are medically examined and the thing is thrashed out, they will find we are not mad.  But don’t you see that if the thing is thrashed out it will mean letters to this reference and telegrams to that; and at the first word of who we are, we shall be taken out of a madhouse, where we may smoke, to a jail, where we mayn’t.  No, if we manage this very quietly, he may merely let us out at the front door as stray revellers.  If there’s half an hour of inquiry, we are cooked.”

MacIan looked at the grass frowningly for a few seconds, and then said in a new, small and childish voice:  “I am awfully stupid, Mr. Turnbull; you must be patient with me.”

Turnbull caught Evan’s elbow again with quite another gesture.  “Come,” he cried, with the harsh voice of one who hides emotion, “come and let us be tactful in chorus.”

The doctor with the pointed beard was already slanting it forward at a more than usually acute angle, with the smile that expressed expectancy.

“I hope I do not hurry you, gentlemen,” he said, with the faintest suggestion of a sneer at their hurried consultation, “but I believe you wanted to see me at half past eleven.”

“I am most awfully sorry, Doctor,” said Turnbull, with ready amiability; “I never meant to keep you waiting; but the silly accident that has landed us in your garden may have some rather serious consequences to our friends elsewhere, and my friend here was just drawing my attention to some of them.”

“Quite so!  Quite so!” said the doctor, hurriedly.  “If you really want to put anything before me, I can give you a few moments in my consulting-room.”

He led them rapidly into a small but imposing apartment, which seemed to be built and furnished entirely in red-varnished wood.  There was one desk occupied with carefully docketed papers; and there were several chairs of the red-varnished wood—­though of different shape.  All along the wall ran something that might have been a bookcase, only that it was not filled with books, but with flat, oblong slabs or cases of the same polished dark-red consistency.  What those flat wooden cases were they could form no conception.