oporific, the
tobacco soothing, the fire hot; he was just hovering in delicious
languor upon the very borders of dreamland when a knock at the door
roused him abruptly. Of course, he was called out.

Had the call been from a well-to-do patient who fostered a half-fancied
illness, he might have been more put out than he certainly was when,
upon turning into the street, he felt the keen east wind nipping his
ears; but it was from a poor house lying in the midst of a very
labyrinth of squalid back streets and foul courts, and yet but a mere
stone's-throw from his own comfortable dwelling.

The Doctor did all that he could for the patient--a disheveled woman,
who had fallen, while drunk, and cut her head. He bound up the wound,
gave a prescription; and, leaving directions with the voluble Irish
charwoman who filled the place of nurse, left the close, evil-smelling
room, glad to breathe even the tainted air outside, and as quickly as
he could retraced his steps.

He had left the last of the wretched narrow streets behind him, and was
turning into a wider road which led by a short cut to the adjacent
thoroughfare, when he heard a shriek--a terrible cry of agony or
fear--perhaps both--and there, not more than a hundred yards before
him, standing out black against the surrounding gray, two figures were
frantically struggling--a man and a woman.

George Brudenell, slight and wiry in figure, was active and swift as a
boy. He shouted and ran, but, before he could reach the two, the man
had violently wrested his arm free and raised it in the air. There was
a flash of steel as it descended, a shrill cry that broke off into a
moan; and the Doctor, hardly able to check himself, almost stumbled
over the woman as she fell at his feet.

CHAPTER II.

Doctor Brudenell's first rapid glance about him as he recovered his
balance assured him that pursuit would be futile. The man had darted
off down a narrow turning which had led into a maze of streets. Already
his rapid footsteps had ceased to echo on the pavement; he was lost by
this time in the busy restless throng of Saturday night
foot-passengers. The Doctor, abandoning any idea of chasing and
securing him, lost not a moment in doing what he could. The short
street was a new one, having on one side a neglected piece of waste
land, where bricks, gravel, and mortar were flung in confusion; upon
the other a row of half-finished houses. A curve at its upper end hid
the thorough