ll awkwardly.

"English and a University man, I should say. Those clothes were cut by a
Bond Street tailor in the height of fashion about five years ago. And the
man is in the second stage of recovery from a bout of drunkenness--unless
he drugs?" But even while the visitor was taking these memoranda, he was
saying in the customary tone of polite inquiry:

"I have, I think, the pleasure of speaking to Dr. Williams?"

"Sir, you have not. Dr. De Boursy-Williams has left for Cape Town with his
family. You are speaking to his temporary substitute." The bloodshot blue
eyes met his own indifferently.

"Indeed! Well, I do not grudge the family if, as I believe is the case, it
chiefly ranks upon the distaff side. But the Doctor will miss a good deal
of interesting practice. As to yourself, you will allow the inquiry....
Are you a surgeon as well as a medical practitioner?"

"If I were not, I should not be here."

"I will put my question differently. I trust you will not consider its
repetition offensive. Have you an extensive experience in dealing with
gunshot wounds?"

Saxham said roughly:

"I have experience to a certain extent. I will go no further than to say
so. I am not undergoing examination as to my professional capabilities
that I am aware of, and if you doubt them you are perfectly at liberty to
seek medical advice elsewhere."

"My good sir, I _have_ been elsewhere, and the other doctor, when he
learned the purport of my visit, relished it as little as your principal
is likely to do. With the imminent prospect of a siege before us, we are
making ..." The speaker, slipping one hand behind him, moved a step
backwards and nearer to the room-door. "As I said, sir, with the imminent
prospect of a siege before us, we are making a house-to-house
requisition.... Ah, I thought as much!"

The door-knob had been quietly turned, the door suddenly pulled open,
bringing with it Koets, the Dutch dispensary-attendant, whose large red
ear had been glued to the outer keyhole.

"Your Dutch factotum has been listening. Pick yourself off the mat, Jan,
and take yourself out of earshot." The stranger whistled the beginning of
a pleasant little tune, with a flavour of Savoy Opera about it.

"Ik heb not the neem of Jan," snarled the detected Koets, retiring in
disorder.

The whistler left off in the middle of a deftly-executed embellishment to
say: "Unfortunate; because I don't know the Dutch word for spy." The keen
hazel eyes