en Anne house, while really there was a tarnished brass
plate bearing the inscription "Dr Chartley," with blistered panels
above and below. Arched over the doorstep was an architect's idea of a
gigantic shell, supported by two stout boys, whom a lively imagination
might have thought to be suffering from the doctor's prescriptions, as
they glared wildly at the red bull's-eye in the centre of the fanlight
above the door.

"Nothing like a red signal to show you where you are," said John Whyley,
stepping slowly back on to the pavement, to the very edge of the
curbstone, and then keeping to it as his guide for a few yards, till he
had passed a second door, also displaying the red light, and beneath it,
in letters nearly rubbed away, though certainly not from cleaning, the
word "Surgery."

"That's where that young nipper of a buttons lives, him as took a sight
at me when I ketched him standing on his head a-top of the dustbin down
the area. Hullo!"

John Whyley stood perfectly still and invisible in the fog, as the
surgery door was opened; there was a low scuffling noise, and a hurried
whispering.

"Get your arm well under him. Hold hard? Shut the door. Mind he don't
slip down. It's dark as pitch. Now then, come on."

At that moment a bright light shone upon the scene in front of Dr
Chartley's surgery door, for John Whyley gave a turn to the top of the
bull's-eye lantern looped on to his belt, and threw up the figures of
three men, two of whom were supporting on either side another, whose
head hung forward and sidewise, whose legs were bent, and his body in a
limp, helpless state, which called forth all the strength of the others
to keep him from subsiding in a heap upon the snow. He seemed to be
young, heavily bearded, and, as far as his costume could be seen in the
yellow glare, he wore high boots and a pea-jacket; while his companions,
one of whom was a keen-faced man, with clean-shaved face and a dark
moustache, the other rather French-looking from his shortly cropped
beard, wore ulsters and close travelling-caps.

As the light flashed upon the group, one of the men drew his breath
sharply between his teeth, and for a space no one stirred.

"Acciden', gentlemen?" said John Whyley, giving a sniff as if he smelt a
warm sixpence, but it was only caused by the soot-charged fog.

The constable's speech seemed to break the spell, and one of the men
spoke out thickly:

"Axe'den', constable? Yes, it's all righ