On coming down to breakfast on the following morning I found Mrs. Mivart awaiting me alone. The old lady apologised for Mary’s non-appearance, saying that it was her habit to have her tea in her room, but that she sent me a message of farewell.

Had it been at all possible I would have left by a later train, for I was extremely anxious to watch her demeanour after last night’s clandestine meeting, but with such a crowd of patients awaiting me it was imperative to leave by the first train. Even that would not bring me to King’s Cross before nearly eleven o’clock.

“Well now, doctor,” Mrs. Mivart commenced rather anxiously when we were seated, and she had handed me my coffee. “You saw Mary last night, and had an opportunity of speaking with her. What is your opinion? Don’t hesitate to tell me frankly, for I consider that it is my duty to face the worst.”

“Really!” I exclaimed, looking straight at her after a moment’s reflection. “To speak candidly I failed to detect anything radically wrong in your daughter’s demeanour.”

“But didn’t you notice, doctor, how extremely nervous she is; how in her eyes there is a haunting, suspicious look, and how blank is her mind upon every other subject but the great calamity that has befallen her?”

“I must really confess that these things were not apparent to me,” I answered. “I watched her carefully, but beyond the facts that she is greatly unnerved by the sad affair and that she is mourning deeply for her dead husband, I can discover nothing abnormal.”

“You are not of opinion, then, that her mind is growing unbalanced by the strain?”

“Not in the least,” I reassured her. “The symptoms she betrays are but natural in a woman of her nervous, highly-strung temperament.”

“But she unfortunately grieves too much,” remarked the old lady with a sigh. “His name is upon her lips at every hour. I’ve tried to distract her and urged her to accompany me abroad for a time, but all to no purpose. She won’t hear of it.”

I alone knew the reason of her refusal. In conspiracy with her “dead” husband it was impossible to be apart from him for long together. The undue accentuation of her daughter’s feigned grief had alarmed the old lady – and justly so. Now that I recollected, her conduct at table on the previous night was remarkable, having regard to the true facts of the case. I confess I had myself been entirely deceived into believing that her sorrow at Henry Courtenay’s death was unbounded. In every detail her acting was perfect, and bound to attract sympathy among her friends and arouse interest among strangers. I longed to explain to the quiet, charming old lady what I had seen during my midnight ramble; but such a course was, as yet, impossible. Indeed, if I made a plain statement, such as I have given in the foregoing pages, surely no one would believe me. But every man has his romance, and this was mine.

Unable to reveal Mary’s secret, I was compelled reluctantly to take leave of her mother, who accompanied me out to where the dog-cart was in waiting.

“I scarcely know, doctor, how to thank you sufficiently,” the dear old lady said as I took her hand. “What you have told me reassures me. Of late I have been extremely anxious, as you may imagine.”

“You need feel no anxiety,” I declared. “She’s nervous and run down – that’s all. Take her away for a change, if possible. But if she refuses, don’t force her. Quiet is the chief medicine in her case. Good-bye.”

She pressed my hand again in grateful acknowledgment, and then I mounted into the conveyance and was driven to the station.

On the journey back to town I pondered long and deeply. Of a verity my short visit to Mrs. Mivart had been fraught with good results, and I was contemplating seeking Ambler Jevons at the earliest possible moment and relating to him my astounding discovery. The fact that old Courtenay was still living was absolutely beyond my comprehension. To endeavour to form any theory, or to try and account for the bewildering phenomenon, was utterly useless. I had seen him, and had overheard his words. I could surely believe my eyes and ears. And there it ended. The why and wherefore I put aside for the present, remembering Mary’s promise to him to come to town and have an interview with me.

Surely that meeting ought to be most interesting. I awaited it with the most intense anxiety, and yet in fear lest I might be led by her clever imposture to blurt out what I knew. I felt myself on the eve of a startling revelation; and my expectations were realized to the full, as the further portion of this strange romance will show.

I know that many narratives have been written detailing the remarkable and almost inconceivable machinations of those who have stained their hands with crime, but I honestly believe that the extraordinary features of my own life-romance are as strange as, if not stranger than, any hitherto recorded. Even my worst enemy could not dub me egotistical, I think; and surely the facts I have set down here are plain and unvarnished, without any attempt at misleading the reader into believing that which is untrue. Mine is a plain chronicle of a chain of extraordinary circumstances which led to an amazing dénouement.

From King’s Cross to Guy’s is a considerable distance, and when I alighted from the cab in the courtyard of the hospital it was nearly mid-day. Until two o’clock I was kept busy in the wards, and after a sandwich and a glass of sherry I drove to Harley Street, where I found Sir Bernard in his consulting-room for the first time for a month.

“Ah! Boyd,” he cried merrily, when I entered. “Thought I’d surprise you to-day. I felt quite well this morning, so resolved to come up and see Lady Twickenham and one or two others. I’m not at home to patients, and have left them to you.”

“Delighted to see you better,” I declared, wringing his hand. “They were asking after you at the hospital to-day. Vernon said he intended going down to see you to-morrow.”

“Kind of him,” the old man laughed, placing his thin hands together, after rubbing and readjusting his glasses. “You were away last night; out of town, they said.”

“Yes, I wanted a breath of fresh air,” I answered, laughing. I did not care to tell him where I had been, knowing that he held my love for Ethelwynn as the possible ruin of my career.

His curiosity seemed aroused; but, although he put to me an ingenious question, I steadfastly refused to satisfy him. I recollected too well his open condemnation of my love on previous occasions. Now that the “murdered” man was proved to be still alive, I surely had no further grounds for my suspicion of Ethelwynn. That she had, by her silence, deceived me regarding her engagement to Mr. Courtenay was plain, but the theory that it was her hand that had assassinated him was certainly disproved. Thus, although the discovery of the “dead” man’s continued existence deepened the mystery a thousandfold, it nevertheless dispelled from my heart a good deal of the suspicion regarding my well-beloved; and, in consequence, I was not desirous that any further hostile word should be uttered against her.

While Sir Bernard went out to visit her ladyship and two or three other nervous women living in the same neighbourhood, I seated myself in his chair and saw the afternoon callers one after another. I fear that the advice I gave during those couple of hours was not very notable for its shrewdness or brilliancy. As in other professions, so in medicine, when one’s brain is overflowing with private affairs, one cannot attend properly to patients. On such occasions one is apt to ask the usual questions mechanically, hear the replies and scribble a prescription of some harmless formula. On the afternoon in question I certainly believe myself guilty of such lapse of professional attention. Yet even we doctors are human, although our patients frequently forget that fact. The medico is a long-suffering person, even in these days of scarcity of properly-qualified men – the first person called on emergency, and the very last to be paid!

It was past five o’clock before I was able to return to my rooms, and on arrival I found upon my table a note from Jevons. It was dated from the Yorick Club, a small but exceedingly comfortable Bohemian centre in Bedford Street, Covent Garden, and had evidently been written hurriedly on the previous night: —

“I hear you are absent in the country. That is unfortunate. But as soon as you receive this, lose no time in calling at the Hennikers’ and making casual inquiries regarding Miss Mivart. Something has happened, but what it is I have failed to discover. You stand a better chance. Go at once. I must leave for Bath to-night. Address me at the Royal Hotel, G. W. Station.

“Ambler Jevons.”

What could have transpired? And why had my friend’s movements been so exceedingly erratic of late, if he had not been following some clue? Would that clue lead him to the truth, I wondered? Or was he still suspicious of Ethelwynn’s guilt?

Puzzled by this vague note, and wondering what had occurred, and whether the trip to Bath was in connection with it, I made a hasty toilet and drove in a hansom to the Hennikers’.

Mrs. Henniker met me in the drawing-room, just as gushing and charming as ever. She was one of those many women in London who seek to hang on to the skirts of polite society by reason of a distant connexion being a countess – a fact of which she never failed to remind the stranger before half-an-hour’s acquaintance. She found it always a pleasant manner in which to open a conversation at dinner, dance, or soirée: “Oh! do you happen to know my cousin, Lady Nassington?” She never sufficiently realised it as bad form, and therefore in her own circle was known among the women, who jeered at her behind her back, as “The Cousin of Lady Nassington.” She was daintily dressed, and evidently just come in from visiting, for she still had her hat on when she entered.

“Ah!” she cried, with her usual buoyant air. “You truant! We’ve all been wondering what had become of you. Busy, of course! Always the same excuse! Find something fresh. You used it a fortnight ago to refuse my invitation to take pot-luck with us.”

I laughed at her unconventional greeting, replying, “If I say something fresh it must be a lie. You know, Mrs. Henniker, how hard I’m kept at it, with hospital work and private practice.”

“That’s all very well,” she said, with a slight pout of her well-shaped mouth – for she was really a pretty woman, even though full of airs and caprices. “But it doesn’t excuse you for keeping away from us altogether.”

“I don’t keep away altogether,” I protested. “I’ve called now.”

She pulled a wry face, in order to emphasise her dissatisfaction at my explanation, and said:

“And I suppose you are prepared to receive castigation? Ethelwynn has begun to complain because people are saying that your engagement is broken off.”

“Who says so?” I inquired rather angrily, for I hated all the tittle-tattle of that little circle of gossips who dawdle over the tea-cups of Redcliffe Square and its neighbourhood. I had attended a good many of them professionally at various times, and was well acquainted with all their ways and all their exaggerations. The gossiping circle in flat-land about Earl’s Court was bad enough, but the Redcliffe Square set, being slightly higher in the social scale, was infinitely worse.

“Oh! all the ill-natured people are commenting upon your apparent coolness. Once, not long ago, you used to be seen everywhere with Ethelwynn, and now no one ever sees you. People form a natural conclusion, of course,” said the fair-haired, fussy little woman, whose married state gave her the right to censure me on my neglect.

“Ethelwynn is, of course, still with you?” I asked, in anger that outsiders should seek to interfere in my private affairs.

“She still makes our house her home, not caring to go back to the dulness of Neneford,” was her reply. “But at present she’s away visiting one of her old schoolfellows – a girl who married a country banker and lives near Hereford.”

“Then she’s in the country?”

“Yes, she went three days ago. I thought she had written to you. She told me she intended doing so.”

I had received no letter from her. Indeed, our recent correspondence had been of a very infrequent and formal character. With a woman’s quick perception she had noted my coldness and had sought to show equal callousness. With the knowledge of Courtenay’s continued existence now in my mind, I was beside myself with grief and anger at having doubted her. But how could I act at that moment, save in obedience to my friend Jevons’ instructions? He had urged me to go and find out some details regarding her recent life with the Hennikers; and with that object I remarked:

“She hasn’t been very well of late, I fear. The change of air should do her good.”

“That’s true, poor girl. She’s seemed very unwell, and I’ve often told her that only one doctor in the world could cure her malady – yourself.”

I smiled. The malady was, I knew too well, the grief of a disappointed love, and a perfect cure for that could only be accomplished by reconciliation. I was filled with regret that she was absent, for I longed there and then to take her to my breast and whisper into her ear my heart’s outpourings. Yes; we men are very foolish in our impetuosity.

“How long will she be away?”

“Why?” inquired the smartly-dressed little woman, mischievously. “What can it matter to you?”

“I have her welfare at heart, Mrs. Henniker,” I answered seriously.

“Then you have a curious way of showing your solicitude on her behalf,” she said bluntly, smiling again. “Poor Ethelwynn has been pining day after day for a word from you; but you seldom, if ever, write, and when you do the coldness of your letters adds to her burden of grief. I knew always when she had received one by the traces of secret tears upon her cheeks. Forgive me for saying so, Doctor, but you men, either in order to test the strength of a woman’s affection, or perhaps out of mere caprice, often try her patience until the strained thread snaps, and she who was a good and pure woman becomes reckless of everything – her name, her family pride, and even her own honour.”

Her words aroused my curiosity.

“And you believe that Ethelwynn’s patience is exhausted?” I asked, anxiously.

Her eyes met mine, and I saw a mysterious expression in them. There is always something strange in the eyes of a pretty woman who is hiding a secret.

“Well, Doctor,” she answered, in a voice quite calm and deliberate, “you’ve already shown yourself so openly as being disinclined to further associate yourself publicly with poor Ethelwynn, because of the tragedy that befell the household, that you surely cannot complain if you find your place usurped by a new and more devoted lover.”

“What!” I cried, starting up, fiercely. “What is this you tell me? Ethelwynn has a lover?”

“I have nothing whatever to do with her affairs, Doctor,” said the tantalising woman, who affected all the foibles of the smarter set. “Now that you have forsaken her she is, of course, entirely mistress of her own actions.”

“But I haven’t forsaken her!” I blurted forth.

She only smiled superciliously, with the same mysterious look – an expression that I cannot define, but by which I knew that she had told me the crushing truth. Ethelwynn, believing that I had cast her aside, had allowed herself to be loved by another!

Who was the man who had usurped my place? I deserved it all, without a doubt. You, reader, have already in your heart condemned me as being hard and indifferent towards the woman I once loved so truly and so well. But, in extenuation, I would ask you to recollect how grave were the suspicions against her – how every fact seemed to prove conclusively that her sister’s husband had died by her hand.

I saw plainly in Mrs. Henniker’s veiled words a statement of the truth; and, after obtaining from her Ethelwynn’s address near Hereford, bade her farewell and blindly left the house.

CHAPTER XX.
MY NEW PATIENT

In the feverish restlessness of the London night, with its rumbling market-wagons and the constant tinkling of cab-bells, so different to the calm, moonlit stillness of the previous night in rural England, I wrote a long explanatory letter to my love.

I admitted that I had wronged her by my apparent coldness and indifference, but sought to excuse myself on the ground of the pressure of work upon me. She knew well that I was not a rich man, and in that slavery to which I was now tied I had an object – the object I had placed before her in the dawning days of our affection – namely, the snug country practice with an old-fashioned comfortable house in one of the quiet villages or smaller towns in the Midlands. In those days she had been just as enthusiastic about it as I had been. She hated town life, I knew; and even if the wife of a country doctor is allowed few diversions, she can always form a select little tea-and-tennis circle of friends.

The fashion nowadays is for girls of middle-class to regard the prospect of becoming a country doctor’s wife with considerable hesitation – “too slow,” they term it; and declare that to live in the country and drive in a governess-cart is synonymous with being buried. Many girls marry just as servants change their places – in order “to better themselves;” and alas! that parents encourage this latter-day craze for artificiality and glitter of town life that so often fascinates and spoils a bride ere the honeymoon is over. The majority of girls to-day are not content to marry the hard-working professional man whose lot is cast in the country, but prefer to marry a man in town, so that they may take part in the pleasures of theatres, variety and otherwise, suppers at restaurants, and the thousand and one attractions provided for the reveller in London. They have obtained their knowledge of “life” from the society papers, and they see no reason why they should not taste of those pleasures enjoyed by their wealthier sisters, whose goings and comings are so carefully chronicled. The majority of girls have a desire to shine beyond their own sphere; and the attempt, alas! is accountable for very many of the unhappy marriages. This may sound prosy, I know, but the reader will forgive when he reflects upon the cases in point which arise to his memory – cases of personal friends, perhaps even of relations, to whom marriage was a failure owing to this uncontrollable desire on the part of the woman to assume a position to which neither birth nor wealth entitled her.

To the general rule, however, my love was an exception. Times without number had she declared her anxiety to settle in the country; for, being country born and bred, she was an excellent horsewoman, and in every essential a thorough English girl of the Grass Country, fond of a run with either fox or otter hounds; therefore, in suburban life at Kew, she had been entirely out of her element.

In that letter I wrote, composing it slowly and carefully – for like most medical men I am a bad hand at literary composition – I sought her forgiveness, and asked for an immediate interview. The wisdom of being so precipitous never occurred to me. I only know that in those night hours over my pipe I resolved to forget once and for all that letter I had discovered among the “dead” man’s effects, and determined that, while I sought reconciliation with Ethelwynn, I would keep an open and watchful eye upon Mary and her fellow conspirator.

The suggestion that Ethelwynn, believing herself forsaken, had accepted the declarations of a man she considered more worthy than myself, lashed me to a frenzy of madness. He should never have her, whoever he might be. She had been mine, and should remain so, come what might. I added a postscript, asking her to wire me permission to travel down to Hereford to see her; then, sealing up the letter, I went out along the Marylebone Road and posted it in the pillar-box, which I knew was cleared at five o’clock in the morning.

It was then about three o’clock, calm, but rather overcast. The Marylebone Road had at last become hushed in silence. Wagons and cabs had both ceased, and save for a solitary policeman here and there the long thoroughfare, so full of traffic by day, was utterly deserted. I retraced my steps slowly towards the corner of Harley Street, and was about to open the door of the house wherein I had “diggings” when I heard a light, hurried footstep behind me, and turning, confronted the figure of a slim woman of middle height wearing a golf cape, the hood of which had been thrown over her head in lieu of a hat.

“Excuse me, sir,” she cried, in a breathless voice, “but are you Doctor Boyd?”

I replied that such was my name.

“Oh, I’m in such distress,” she said, in the tone of one whose heart is full of anguish. “My poor father!”

“Is your father ill?” I inquired, turning from the door and looking full at her. I was standing on the step, and she was on the pavement, having evidently approached from the opposite direction. She stood with her back to the street lamp, so I could discern nothing of her features. Only her voice told me that she was young.

“Oh, he’s very ill,” she replied anxiously. “He was taken queer at eleven o’clock, but he wouldn’t hear of me coming to you. He’s one of those men who don’t like doctors.”

“Ah!” I remarked; “there are many of his sort about. But they are compelled to seek our aid now and then. Well, what can I do for you? I suppose you want me to see him – eh?”

“Yes, sir, if you’d be so kind. I know its awfully late; but, as you’ve been out, perhaps you wouldn’t mind running round to our house. It’s quite close, and I’ll take you there.” She spoke with the peculiar drawl and dropped her “h’s” in the manner of the true London-bred girl.

“I’ll come if you’ll wait a minute,” I said, and then, leaving her outside, I entered the house and obtained my thermometer and stethoscope.

When I rejoined her and closed the door I made some inquiries about the sufferer’s symptoms, but the description she gave me was so utterly vague and contradictory that I could make nothing out of it. Her muddled idea of his illness I put down to her fear and anxiety for his welfare.

She had no mother, she told me; and her father had, of late, given way just a little to drink. He “used” the Haycock, in Edgware Road; and she feared that he had fallen among a hard-drinking set. He was a pianoforte-maker, and had been employed at Brinsmead’s for eighteen years. Since her mother died, six years ago, however, he had never been the same.

“It was then that he took to drink?” I hazarded.

“Yes,” she responded. “He was devoted to her. They never had a wry word.”

“What has he been complaining of? Pains in the head – or what?”

“Oh, he’s seemed thoroughly out of sorts,” she answered after some slight hesitation, which struck me as peculiar. She was greatly agitated regarding his illness, yet she could not describe one single symptom clearly. The only direct statement she made was that her father had certainly not been drinking on the previous night, for he had remained indoors ever since he came home from the works, as usual, at seven o’clock.

As she led me along the Marylebone Road, in the same direction as that I had just traversed – which somewhat astonished me – I glanced surreptitiously at her, just at the moment when we were approaching a street lamp, and saw to my surprise that she was a sad-faced girl whose features were familiar. I recognised her in a moment as the girl who had been my fellow passenger from Brighton on that Sunday night. Her hair, however, was dishevelled, as though she had turned out from her bed in too great alarm to think of tidying it. I was rather surprised, but did not claim acquaintance with her. She led me past Madame Tussaud’s, around Baker Street Station, and then into the maze of those small cross-streets that lie between Upper Baker Street and Lisson Grove until she stopped before a small, rather respectable-looking house, half-way along a short side-street, entering with a latch-key.

In the narrow hall it was quite dark, but she struck a match and lit a cheap paraffin lamp which stood there in readiness, then led me upstairs to a small sitting-room on the first floor, a dingy, stuffy little place of a character which showed me that she and her father lived in lodgings. Having set the lamp on the table, and saying that she would go and acquaint the invalid with my arrival, she went out, closing the door quietly after her. The room was evidently the home of a studious, if poor, man, for in a small deal bookcase I noticed, well-kept and well-arranged, a number of standard works on science and theology, as well as various volumes which told me mutely that their owner was a student, while upon the table lay a couple of critical reviews, the “Saturday” and “Spectator.”

I took up the latter and glanced it over in order to pass the time, for my conductress seemed to be in consultation with her father. My eye caught an article that interested me, and I read it through, forgetting for a moment all about my call there. Fully ten minutes elapsed, when of a sudden I heard the voice of a man speaking somewhat indistinctly in a room above that in which I was sitting. He seemed to be talking low and gruffly, so that I was unable to distinguish what was said. At last, however, the girl returned, and, asking me to follow her, conducted me to a bedroom on the next floor.

The only illumination was a single night-light burning in a saucer, casting a faint, uncertain glimmer over everything, and shaded with an open book so that the occupant of the bed lay in deepest shadow. Unlike what one would have expected to find in such a house, an iron bedstead with brass rail, the bed was a great old-fashioned one with heavy wool damask hangings; and advancing towards it, while the girl retired and closed the door after her, I bent down to see the invalid.

In the shadow I could just distinguish on the pillow a dark-bearded face whose appearance was certainly not prepossessing.

“You are not well?” I said, inquiringly, as our eyes met in the dim half-light. “Your daughter is distressed about you.”

“Yes, I’m a bit queer,” he growled. “But she needn’t have bothered you.”

“Let me remove the shade from the light, so that I can see your face,” I suggested. “It’s too dark to see anything.”

“No,” he snapped; “I can’t bear the light. You can see quite enough of me here.”

“Very well,” I said, reluctantly, and taking his wrist in one hand I held my watch in the other.

“I fancy you’ll find me a bit feverish,” he said in a curious tone, almost as though he were joking, and by his manner I at once put him down as one of those eccentric persons who are sceptical of any achievements of medical science.

I was holding his wrist and bending towards the light, in order to distinguish the hands of my watch, when a strange thing happened.

There was a deafening explosion close behind me, which caused me to jump back startled. I dropped the man’s hand and turned quickly in the direction of the sound; but, as I did so, a second shot from a revolver held by an unknown person was discharged full in my face.

The truth was instantly plain. I had been entrapped for my watch and jewellery – like many another medical man in London has been before me; doctors being always an easy prey for thieves. The ruffian shamming illness sprang from his bed fully dressed, and at the same moment two other blackguards, who had been hidden in the room, flung themselves upon me ere I could realize my deadly peril.

The whole thing had been carefully planned, and it was apparent that the gang were quite fearless of neighbours overhearing the shots. The place bore a bad reputation, I knew; but I had never suspected that a man might be fired at from behind in that cowardly way.

So sudden and startling were the circumstances that I stood for a moment motionless, unable to fully comprehend their intention. There was but one explanation. These men intended to kill me!

Without a second’s hesitation they rushed upon me, and I realized with heart-sinking that to attempt to resist would be utterly futile. I was entirely helpless in their hands!