Chapter 16

Mr. Dewson could receive no visitors. Captain O’Hagan swept the servant aside and waved to me to follow. It needs something more than a verbal rebuff to exclude O’Hagan—something in the nature of a double-barred iron door or a squad with fixed bayonets. My friend honoured Mr. Dewson’s apartment. And Mr. Dewson, a heavily bandaged figure hunched up in an armchair by the fire, observed our intrusion with his one visible eye. “Raymond,” said O’Hagan, as he focussed this crippled apparition, “the ‘Trooper’ has forestal…