“It seems to be the fashion in Hoxton,” I remarked. “I had to make my visits at appointed times, too. It would have been frightfully inconvenient if I had been busy. Is it often done?”
“They will always do it if you let ’em. Of course, it is a convenience to a woman who doesn’t keep a servant, to know what time the doctor is going to call; but it doesn’t do to give way to ’em.”
I assented to this excellent principle, noting, however, that he seemed to have “given way to ’em,” all the same.
As we had been talking, we had gradually drifted from the surgery up a flight of stairs to a shabby, cosy little room on the first floor, where a cheerful fire was burning and a copper kettle on a trivet purred contentedly and breathed forth little clouds of steam. Usher inducted me into a large easy chair, the depressed seat of which suggested its customary use by an elephant of sedentary habits, and produced from a cupboard a spirit decanter, a high-shouldered Dutch gin-bottle, a sugar-basin, and a couple of tumblers and sugar-crushers.
“Whisky or Hollands?” he demanded; and, as curiosity led me to select the latter, he commented: “That’s right, Gray. Good stuff, Hollands. Touches up the cubical epithelium—what! I am rather partial to a drop of Hollands.”
It was no empty profession. The initial dose made me open my eyes; and that was only a beginning. In a twinkling, as it seemed, his tumbler was empty and the collaboration of the bottle and the copper kettle was repeated. And so it went on for nearly an hour, until I began to grow quite uneasy, though without any visible cause, so far as Usher was concerned. He did not turn a hair (he hadn’t very many to turn, for that matter, but I speak figuratively). The only effect that I could observe was an increasing fluency of speech with a tendency to discursiveness; and I must admit that his conversation was highly entertaining. But his evident intention to “make a night of it” set me planning to make my escape without appearing to slight his hospitality. How I should have managed it, unaided by the direct interposition of Providence, I cannot guess: for his conversation had now taken the form of an interminable sentence punctuated by indistinguishable commas; but in the midst of this steadily flowing stream of eloquence the outer silence was rent by the sudden jangling of a bell.
Usher stopped short, stared at me solemnly, deliberately emptied his tumbler, and stood up.
“Night bell, ol’ chappie,” he explained. “Got to go out. But don’t you disturb yourself. Back in a few minutes. Soon polish ’em off.”
“I’ll walk round with you as far as your patient’s house,” said I, “and then I shall have to get home. It is past ten and I have a longish walk to Camden Square.”
He was disposed to argue the point, but another violent jangling cut his protests short and sent him hurrying down the stairs with me close at his heels. A couple of minutes later we were out in the street, following in the wake of a hurrying figure; and, looking at Usher as he walked sedately at my side, with his top-hat, his whiskers, and his inevitable umbrella, I had the feeling that all those jorums of Hollands had been consumed in vain. In appearance, in manner, in speech, and in gait, he was just his normal self, with never a hint of any change from the status quo ante bellum.
Our course led us into the purlieus of St. John Street Road, where we presently turned into a narrow, winding, and curiously desolate little street, along which we proceeded for a few hundred yards, when our “forerunner” halted at a door into which he inserted a latchkey. When we arrived at the open door, inside which a shadowy figure was lurking, Usher stopped and held out his hand.
“Good night, old chap,” he said. “Sorry you can’t come back with me. If you keep straight on and turn to the left at the crossroads you will come out presently into the King’s Crossroad. Then you’ll know your way. So long.”
He turned into the dark passage, the door was closed, and I went on my way.
The little meandering street was singularly silent and deserted; and its windings cut off the light from the scanty streetlamps so that stretches of it were in almost total darkness. As I strode forward, the echoes of my footfalls resounded with hollow reverberations which smote my ear—and ought to have smitten my conscience—causing me to wonder, with grim amusement, what Thorndyke would have said if he could have seen me thus setting his instructions at defiance. Indeed, I was so far sensible of the impropriety of my being in such a place at such an hour that I was about to turn to take a look back along the street; but at the very moment that I halted within a few feet of a streetlamp, something struck the brim of my hat with a sharp, weighty blow like the stroke of a hammer, and I heard a dull thud from the lamppost.
In an instant I spun round, mighty fierce, whipping out my pistol, cocking it, and pointing it down the street as I raced back towards the spot from whence the missile had appeared to come. There was not a soul in sight nor any sound of movement, and the shallow doorways seemed to offer no possible hiding place. But some thirty yards back I came suddenly on a narrow opening like an empty doorway, but
