"I'd like to see anybody open 'em 'thout my pe'mision," answered Jim
imperiously. "When you's asleep, Chief, I'm awake; and I take care of
you' things, same as ever I done. There ain't no wires been opened, and
there ain't goin' to be whiles I'm runnin' the show for you."
"Open and read them to me," commanded Ingolby. Again Ingolby was
conscious of hesitation on Jim's part. Already the acuteness of the
blind was possessing him, sharpening the senses left unimpaired.
Although Jim moved, presumably, towards the place where the telegrams
lay, Ingolby realized that his own authority was being crossed by that
of the doctor and the nurse.
"You will leave the room for a moment, nurse," he said with a brassy
vibration in the voice--a sign of nervous strain. With a smothered
protest the nurse left, and Jim stood beside the bed with the telegrams.
"Read them to me, Jim," Ingolby repeated irritably. "Be quick."
They were not wires which Ingolby should have heard at the time, when his
wound was still inflamed, when he was still on the outer circle of that
artificial sleep which the opiates had secured. They were from Montreal
and New York, and, resolved from their half-hidden suggestion into bare
elements, they meant that henceforth others would do the work he had
done.
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