gold
on to the table.

"There are one hundred pounds there," said he, "and I promise you that
it will not take you an hour. I have a cab ready at the door."

Douglas Stone glanced at his watch. An hour would not make it too late
to visit Lady Sannox. He had been there later. And the fee was an
extraordinarily high one. He had been pressed by his creditors lately,
and he could not afford to let such a chance pass. He would go.

"What is the case?" he asked.

"Oh, it is so sad a one! So sad a one! You have not, perhaps, heard
of the daggers of the Almohades?"

"Never."

"Ah, they are Eastern daggers of a great age and of a singular shape,
with the hilt like what you call a stirrup. I am a curiosity dealer,
you understand, and that is why I have come to England from Smyrna, but
next week I go back once more. Many things I brought with me, and I
have a few things left, but among them, to my sorrow, is one of these
daggers."

"You will remember that I have an appointment, sir," said the surgeon,
with some irritation. "Pray confine yourself to the necessary details."

"You will see that it is necessary. To-day my wife fell down in a
faint in the room in which I keep my wares, and she cut her lower lip
upon this cursed dagger of Almohades."

"I see," said Douglas Stone, rising. "And you wish me to dress the
wound?"

"No, no, it is worse than that."

"What then?"

"These daggers are poisoned."

"Poisoned!"

"Yes, and there is no man, East or West, who can tell now what is the
poison or what the cure. But all that is known I know, for my father
was in this trade before me, and we have had much to do with these
poisoned weapons."

"What are the symptoms?"

"Deep sleep, and death in thirty hours."

"And you say there is no cure. Why then should you pay me this
considerable fee?"

"No drug can cure, but the knife may."

"And how?"

"The poison is slow of absorption. It remains for hours in the wound."

"Washing, then, might cleanse it?"

"No more than in a snake-bite. It is too subtle and too deadly."

"Excision of the wound, then?"

"That is it. If it be on the finger, take the finger off. So said my
father always. But think of where this wound is, and that it is my
wife. It is dreadful!"

But familiarity with such grim matters may take the finer edge from a
man's sympathy. To Douglas Stone this was already an interesting case,
and he brushed aside as irrelevant the feeble