“We will give him some medicine and attend to his general condition, and you had better let me see him again as soon as possible.”  I was about to say that the effect of the medicine itself might throw some light on the patient’s condition, but, as I proposed to treat him for morphine poisoning, I thought it wiser to keep this item of information to myself.  Accordingly, I confined myself to a few general directions as to the care of the patient, to which Mr. Weiss listened attentively.  “And,” I concluded, “we must not lose sight of the opium question.  You had better search the room carefully and keep a close watch on the patient, especially during his intervals of wakefulness.”

“Very well, doctor,” Mr. Weiss replied, “I will do all that you tell me and I will send for you again as soon as possible, if you do not object to poor Graves’s ridiculous conditions.  And now, if you will allow me to pay your fee, I will go and order the carriage while you are writing the prescription.”

“There is no need for a prescription,” I said.  “I will make up some medicine and give it to the coachman.”

Mr. Weiss seemed inclined to demur to this arrangement, but I had my own reasons for insisting on it.  Modern prescriptions are not difficult to read, and I did not wish Mr. Weiss to know what treatment the patient was having.

As soon as I was left alone, I returned to the bedside and once more looked down at the impassive figure.  And as I looked, my suspicions revived.  It was very like morphine poisoning; and, if it was morphine, it was no common, medicinal dose that had been given.  I opened my bag and took out my hypodermic case from which I extracted a little tube of atropine tabloids.  Shaking out into my hand a couple of the tiny discs, I drew down the patient’s under-lip and slipped the little tablets under his tongue.  Then I quickly replaced the tube and dropped the case into my bag; and I had hardly done so when the door opened softly and the housekeeper entered the room.

“How do you find Mr. Graves?” she asked in what I thought a very unnecessarily low tone, considering the patient’s lethargic state.

“He seems to be very ill,” I answered.

“So!” she rejoined, and added:  “I am sorry to hear that.  We have been anxious about him.”

She seated herself on the chair by the bedside, and, shading the candle from the patient’s face—­and her own, too—­produced from a bag that hung from her waist a half-finished stocking and began to knit silently and with the skill characteristic of the German housewife.  I looked at her attentively (though she was so much in the shadow that I could see her but indistinctly) and somehow her appearance prepossessed me as little as did that of the other members of the household.  Yet she was not an ill-looking woman.  She had an excellent figure, and the air of a person of good social position; her features were good enough and her colouring, although