“Are you the doctor, sir?”
I replied in the affirmative, and asked her to be seated.
“I’m sorry to trouble you, sir,” she said, “but would you come round with me? My mistress has been taken worse.”
“What’s the matter with her?” I inquired.
“I don’t know, sir,” answered the woman, in deep distress, “But I do beg of you to come at once.”
“Certainly I will,” I said. And leaving her, ascended, put on my boots, and placing my case of instruments in my pocket, quickly rejoined her, and entered the cab in waiting.
On our drive along Hammersmith Road, and through several thoroughfares lying on the right, I endeavoured to obtain from her some idea of the nature of the lady’s ailment; but she was either stupidly ignorant, or else had received instructions to remain silent.
The cab at last pulled up before a fine grey house with a wide portico, supported by four immense columns, before which we alighted. The place, standing close to the entrance to a large square, was a handsome one, with bright flowers in boxes before the windows, and a striped sun-blind over the balcony formed by the roof of the portico. The quilted blinds were down because of the strong sun, but our ring was instantly answered by a grave-looking footman, who showed me into a cosy library at the end of the hall.
“I’ll tell my master at once that you are here, sir,” the man said. And he closed the door, leaving me alone.
Chapter Two
The Third Finger
The house was one of no mean order, and a glance at the rows of books showed them to be well chosen – evidently the valued treasures of a studious man. Upon the writing-table was an electric reading-lamp with green shade, and a fine, pale photograph of a handsome woman in a heavy silver frame. In the stationery rack upon the table the note-paper bore an embossed cipher surmounted by a coronet.
After a few moments the door re-opened, and there entered a very thin, pale-faced, slightly-built man of perhaps sixty, carefully dressed in clothes of rather antique cut. He threw out his chest in walking, and carried himself with stiff, unbending hauteur. His dark eyes were small and sharp, and his clean-shaven face rendered his aquiline features the more pronounced.
“Good morning,” he said, greeting me in a thin, squeaky voice. “I am very glad my servant found you at home.”
“And I, too, am glad to be of service, if possible,” I responded.
He motioned me to be seated, at the same time taking a chair behind his writing-table. Was it, I wondered, by design or by accident that in the position he had assumed his face remained in the deep shadow, while my countenance was within the broad ray of sunlight that came in between the blind and the window-sash? There was something curious in his attitude, but what it was I could not determine.
“I called you in to-day, doctor,” he explained, resting his thin, almost waxen hands upon the table, “not so much for medical advice as to have a chat with you.”
“But the patient?” I observed. “Had I not better see her first, and chat afterwards?”
“No,” he responded. “It is necessary that we should first understand one another perfectly.”
I glanced at him, but his face was only a grey blotch in the deep shadow. Of its expression I could observe nothing. Who, I wondered, was this man?
“Then the patient is better, I presume?”
“Better, but still in a precarious condition,” he replied, in a snapping voice. Then, after a moment’s pause, he added, in a more conciliatory tone, “I don’t know, doctor, whether you will agree with me, but I have a theory that, just as every medical man and lawyer has his fee, so has every man his price!”
“I scarcely follow you,” I said, somewhat puzzled. “I mean that every man, no matter what his station in life, is ready to perform services for another, providing the sum is sufficient in payment.”
I smiled at his philosophy. “There is a good deal of truth in that,” I remarked; “but of course there are exceptions.”
“Are you one?” he inquired sharply, in a strange voice.
I hesitated. His question was curious. I could not see his object in such observations.
“I ask you a plain question,” he repeated. “Are you so rich as to be beyond the necessity of money?”
“No,” I answered frankly. “I’m not rich.”
“Then you admit that, for a certain price, you would be willing to perform a service?” he said bluntly.
“I don’t admit anything of the kind,” I laughed, not, however, without a feeling of indignation.
“Well,” he said after a few moments hesitation, during which time his pair of small black eyes were, I knew, fixed upon me, “I’ll speak more plainly. Would you object, for instance, to taking a fee of five figures to-day?”
“A fee of five figures?” I repeated, puzzled. “I don’t quite follow you.”
“Five figures equal to ten thousand pounds,” he said slowly, in a strange voice.
“A fee of five figures,” I repeated, puzzled. “For what?”
In an instant it flashed across my mind that the thin, grey-faced man before me was trying to suborn me to commit murder – that crime so easily committed by a doctor. The thought staggered me.
“The service I require of you is not a very difficult one,” he answered, bending across the table in his earnestness. “You are young – a bachelor, I presume – and enthusiastic in your honourable calling. Would not ten thousand pounds be of great use to you at this moment?”
I admitted that it would. What could I not do with such a sum?
Again I asked him the nature of the service he demanded, but he cleverly evaded my inquiries.
“My suggestion will, I fear, strike you as curious,” he added. “But in this matter there must be no hesitation on our part; it must be accomplished to-day.”
“Then it is, I take it, a matter of life or death?”
There was a brief silence, broken only by the low ticking of the marble clock upon the mantelshelf.
“Of death,” he answered in a low, strained tone. “Of death, rather than of life.”
I held my breath. My countenance must have undergone a change, and this did not escape his observant eyes, for he added —
“Before we go further, I would ask you, doctor, to regard this interview as strictly confidential.”
“It shall be entirely as you wish,” I stammered.
The atmosphere of the room seemed suddenly oppressive, my head was in a whirl, and I wanted to get away from the presence of my tempter.
“Good,” he said, apparently reassured. “Then we can advance a step further. I observed just now that you were a bachelor, and you did not contradict me.”
“I am a bachelor, and have no intention of marrying.”
“Not for ten thousand pounds?” he inquired.
“I’ve never yet met a woman whom I could love sufficiently,” I told him quite plainly.
“But is your name so very valuable to you that you would hesitate to bestow it upon a woman for a single hour – even though you were a widower before sunset?”
“A widower before sunset?” I echoed. “You speak in enigmas. If you were plainer in your words I might comprehend your meaning.”
“Briefly, my meaning is this,” he said, in a firmer voice, after pausing, as though to gauge my strength of character. “Upstairs in this house my daughter is ill – she is not confined to her bed, but she is nevertheless dying. Two doctors have attended