ll be perfectly
frank with you, and if it suits you it will suit me very well. I have a
few thousands to invest, d'ye see, and I think I'll sink them in you.'

"'But why?' I gasped.

"'Well, it's just like any other speculation, and safer than most.'

"'What am I to do, then?'

"'I'll tell you. I'll take the house, furnish it, pay the maids, and run
the whole place. All you have to do is just to wear out your chair in
the consulting-room. I'll let you have pocket-money and everything. Then
you hand over to me three quarters of what you earn, and you keep the
other quarter for yourself.'

"This was the strange proposal, Mr. Holmes, with which the man
Blessington approached me. I won't weary you with the account of how
we bargained and negotiated. It ended in my moving into the house next
Lady-day, and starting in practice on very much the same conditions as
he had suggested. He came himself to live with me in the character of a
resident patient. His heart was weak, it appears, and he needed constant
medical supervision. He turned the two best rooms of the first floor
into a sitting-room and bedroom for himself. He was a man of singular
habits, shunning company and very seldom going out. His life was
irregular, but in one respect he was regularity itself. Every evening,
at the same hour, he walked into the consulting-room, examined the
books, put down five and three-pence for every guinea that I had earned,
and carried the rest off to the strong-box in his own room.

"I may say with confidence that he never had occasion to regret his
speculation. From the first it was a success. A few good cases and the
reputation which I had won in the hospital brought me rapidly to the
front, and during the last few years I have made him a rich man.

"So much, Mr. Holmes, for my past history and my relations with Mr.
Blessington. It only remains for me now to tell you what has occurred to
bring me here to-night.

"Some weeks ago Mr. Blessington came down to me in, as it seemed to me,
a state of considerable agitation. He spoke of some burglary which, he
said, had been committed in the West End, and he appeared, I remember,
to be quite unnecessarily excited about it, declaring that a day should
not pass before we should add stronger bolts to our windows and doors.
For a week he continued to be in a peculiar state of restlessness,
peering continually out of the windows, and ceasing to take the short
walk which had usually been th