style="font-size:15px;"> “Of course you’ll pocket all the fees,” he added, with a touch of grim humour. “They’re not very heavy – bobs and half-crowns – but they may keep you in tobacco till I come back.”
And thus I became the locum tenens of the not too extensive practice of Robert Raymond, surgeon, for he departed for Paddington on the following evening, and I entered upon my somewhat lonely duties.
The first couple of days passed without incident. I visited the two children with the croup, looked in upon the bedridden relict of a bibulous furniture-dealer, and examined the stomach with the perpetual pain. The latter proved a much more serious case than I had supposed, and from the first I saw that the poor fellow was suffering from an incurable disease. My visits only took an hour, and the rest of the day I spent in the little den upstairs, smoking furiously and reading.
On the third morning, shortly before midday, just as I was thinking of going out to make my round of visits, an unusual incident occurred.
I heard a cab stop outside, and a moment later the surgery bell was violently rung. I started, for that sound was synonymous with half a crown.
A middle-aged woman, in black, evidently a domestic servant, stood in the surgery, and, as I confronted her, asked breathlessly —
“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
