Page:How I Cured a Hopeless Paralytic.pdf/8

570 fat, pursy old woman dozed in the parlour behind.

"Good-evening, sir. Want any refreshment?"

"Not just now, thanks, but I should like to have a bottle of your ale to take home with me."

"Which'll you have?"

"Oh, I don't know. Which do you take yourself?"

"I mostly takes the thruppenny."

"And what do Puddy and Williams fancy?" naming the blacksmith and the general shop man.

"Their fancy's the same—real old Burton," slapping the handle of the beer-engine. And then, as he filled a bottle for me, "How be Mr. Artlett now?"

"Pretty well. Do you know him?"

"Oh, yes; I knows 'im!" adding, in a stage whisper, as he jerked his thumb towards the parlour, E's a-sparkin' the missus! Banns are a-goin' up soon."

"But I mean Artlett—the paralysed man, you know."

"Oh, yes; that's 'im. We all knows about that there," he added, with a subtle grin.

As I rode off with the bottle of beer I tried to picture the dalliance of the bedridden Artlett and the fat ale-wife, who presumably was an occasional visitor to the cottage. True, their attachment could hardly rest upon what De Quincey has styled "a tenure so perishable as mere personal beauty," but Artlett enjoyed what was practically a life pension, "by County Court law," as he would have put it, enabling him to rank as a man of substance; while her beer-shop would endow the widow with attractions which the grossest flattery must deny to her person.

Just outside the village I punctured badly, and when I got down to investigate I found I had run over one of those diabolical iron boot-tips, which had entered the tyre with all its three teeth. More, they had gone right through the opposite side of the tube, for when, after a most elaborate repair, I replaced the tyre and inflated, for all my pumping I was no further forward: so off the tyre had to come, while I did another, and even larger, patching. It could not have been more than six when I punctured, but by the time I finished the sun had long set, and dusk was coming on fast. I lit my lamp and pedalled hard. There was no time to lose. I was not to know what might be happening in my absence, and I had been away ever since noon.

"Where yer comin' to?"

Crash!

When I scrambled out of the ditch (there had been no rain of late, and it was dry, thank goodness!), the lamp was still burning on the machine as it lay far along the road, and I was just able to make out the figure of the man I had run into sitting upon a stone-heap. I was none the worse for the spill, though a bit shaken; and calling to him, "I'll soon see to you—I'm a doctor," ran to the machine. I was relieved to find both it and the bottle of beer were safe and sound; so dragging it to the side of the road, I unshipped the lamp and went back to the man. He had disappeared! At first I thought I had mistaken the spot and hunted about for another; but no, here was the patch of roadway I had swept as I skimmed into the ditch, and opposite was the heap of stones where I could swear I had seen the man holding his head and growling at me. At my feet something shone brightly as I flashed the lamp about. I picked it up; it was a brass tobacco-box, a broken clay-pipe beside it, but for which evidence of the collision I might have almost doubted its occurrence, in such ghostly fashion had the obstructionist vanished. Pocketing the box I remounted, a little stiffly, and rode on to Rougholt.

After the moving events of the day I slept soundly, but my earliest waking thought was of the beer, and scarcely waiting to swallow breakfast, I set to work examining it. Although I was inclined to distrust the chemicals, they played me no tricks; a few minutes' testing showed a marked reaction of lead in the sample, and then—I had solved the mystery! It lay in the cellars of the "Goose and Gridiron," or, rather, in the leaden pipes through which the beer was drawn from the barrels, But the next minute my enthusiasm evaporated, as I thought of Artlett. How was I to account for his share in the epidemic? He lay a good three miles from the alehouse, and the beer he drank, until the last few days at least. was supplied by the Hall. Suddenly I bethought me of the tapster’s remark, of the "sparking," and of the approaching publication of the banns. Here was a possible connection with the "Goose and Gridiron" which I must do my best to investigate.

"Why, what on earth is the matter with you?" I exclaimed when, a couple of hours