I made a mistake, sir? Have I given you Number Fifteen instead of
Number Eighteen?"

The gentleman produced his numbered card.

A mistake had certainly been made, but not the mistake that the servant
supposed. The card held by the latest visitor turned out to be the
card previously held by the dissatisfied stranger who had just left
the room--Number Fourteen! As to the card numbered Fifteen, it was only
discovered the next morning lying in a corner, dropped on the floor!

Acting on his first impulse, the servant hurried out, calling to the
original holder of Fourteen to come back and bear his testimony to that
fact. The street-door had been opened for him by the landlady of
the house. She was a pretty woman--and the gentleman had fortunately
lingered to talk to her. He was induced, at the intercession of the
landlady, to ascend the stairs again.

On returning to the waiting-room, he addressed a characteristic question
to the assembled visitors. "_More_ humbug?" asked the gentleman who
liked to talk to a pretty woman.

The servant--completely puzzled by his own stupidity--attempted to make
his apologies.

"Pray forgive me, gentlemen," he said. "I am afraid I have confused the
cards I distribute with the cards returned to me. I think I had better
consult my master."

Left by themselves, the visitors began to speak jestingly of the strange
situation in which they were placed. The original holder of Number
Fourteen described his experience of the Doctor in his own pithy way.
"I applied to the fellow to tell my fortune. He first went to sleep over
it, and then he said he could tell me nothing. I asked why. 'I don't
know,' says he. '_ I_ do,' says I--'humbug!' I'll bet you the long odds,
gentlemen, that _you_ find it humbug, too."

Before the wager could be accepted or declined, the door of the inner
room was opened again. The tall, spare, black figure of a new personage
appeared on the threshold, relieved darkly against the light in the room
behind him. He addressed the visitors in these words:

"Gentlemen, I must beg your indulgence. The accident--as we now suppose
it to be--which has given to the last comer the number already held by a
gentleman who has unsuccessfully consulted me, may have a meaning which
we can none of us at present see. If the three visitors who have been
so good as to wait will allow the present holder of Number Fourteen
to consult me out of his turn--and if the earlier visitor who left me
d