ICA

BY HARRY COLLINGWOOD

CHAPTER ONE.

THE CATASTROPHE.

Doctor Julian Humphreys was spoken of by those who believed that they
knew him best as an eccentric; because, being a physician and surgeon of
quite unusual ability, he chose--possessing a small independence
amounting to a bare three hundred pounds per annum--to establish himself
in the East-End of London, and there devote himself with zeal and
enthusiasm to the amelioration of the sufferings of the very poor,
instead of capitalising his income and setting up in Harley Street,
where his exceptional qualifications would speedily and inevitably have
brought him a handsome fortune.

An income of three hundred pounds per annum--out of which one has to
feed, clothe, and house oneself--does not afford very much scope for the
practice of philanthropy, as Dr Humphreys very well knew; his
establishment, therefore, was of very modest dimensions, consisting
merely of three rooms with the usual domestic offices, one room--the
front and largest one--being fitted up as surgery, dispensary, and
consulting room, while, of the other two, one served as a sleeping
apartment for himself and his pupil, Mr Richard Maitland, the third
being sacred to Polly Nevis, a sturdy and willing, but somewhat untidy
person, who discharged the united functions of parlour maid, housemaid,
chamber maid, cook, and scullery maid to the establishment.

The large red lamp which shone over Dr Humphreys' door at night was the
one and only picturesque feature of Paradise Street--surely so named by
an individual of singularly caustic and sardonic humour, for anything
less suggestive of the delights of Paradise than the squalid and
malodorous street so named it would indeed be difficult to conceive--and
in the course of the four years during which it had been in position
that lamp had become a familiar object to every man, woman, and child
within a radius of at least a mile; for the Doctor's fame had soon
spread, and his clientele comprised practically everybody within that
radius.

The apparently insignificant event that initiated the extraordinary
series of adventures, of which this is the narrative, occurred about the
hour of 8 a.m. on a certain day of September in the year of our Lord
19--; and it consisted in the delivery by the postman of a letter
addressed to Mr Richard Maitland, care of Dr J. Humphreys, 19
Paradise Street, Whitechapel, E. The letter was addressed in the well-
known ha