ounds she 'ad of Bough, shakin' an' shiverin'. An' he wasn't to send
no more to the haddress he knew, because she wouldn't be there. Always
move hout ... she says, after a fresh job! Oh, my Gawd! An' Bough, he
hordered me, an' Hi 'ad to give in. An' to-night Hi reckoned Hi was dyin'
an' 'e said Hi best harsk you, 'e was about fed up with women an' their
blooming sicknesses. So Hi biked 'ere because Hi couldn't walk. An'
now!..." She groaned: "Hi _ham_ dyin', aren't Hi?"

Even to an observation less skilled than that of the expert medical
practitioner the signs of swift and speedy dissolution were written on the
insignificant, once pretty, little face. Dying, the miserable little
creature had ridden to Chilworth Street, hastening her own inevitable end
by the stupendous act of folly, and ensuring Saxham's. That certainty had
pierced him, even as the first horrible convulsion seized her and wrenched
her sideways off the bench. He caught her, and shouted for his man, and
they carried her into the consulting-room, and laid her on a sofa, and he
did what might be done, knowing that his mercy on her involved swift and
pitiless retribution upon himself. Mrs. Bough died three hours later, as
the grey dawn straggled through the blinds, and the men with the district
ambulance waited at the door, and Dr. Owen Saxham went about his work that
day with a strange sensation of expecting some heavy blow that was about
to fall. It fell upon the day following the Coroner's Inquest. He was
sitting down to breakfast when a Superintendent of Police arrested him
upon a warrant from Scotland Yard.

His servant, very pale, had announced that the Superintendent wished to
see the Doctor. The Superintendent was in the room, courteously saluting
Saxham, before the man had fairly got out the words.

"Good-morning, sir. A pleasant day!"

"Unlike the business that brings you here, I think, Mr. Superintendent?"
said Saxham, with his square jaw set. His man spilt the coffee and hot
milk over the cloth in trying to fill his master's cup. "You are nervous,
Tait. You had better go downstairs, I think, unless----" Saxham looked
interrogatively at the burly, officially-clad figure of the Law.

"No, sir, thank you. We do not at present require your man, but it is my
duty to tell him that he had better not be out of the way, in case his
testimony is wanted."

"You hear?" said Saxham; and as white-faced Tait fled, trembling, to the
lower regions: "Of cours