“It’s an ill wind that blows nobody good,” he remarked cheerfully as we shook hands.  “This will pay the expenses of my holiday, including you.  By the way, you are not anxious to be off, I suppose?”

As a matter of fact, I was; for I had decided to accept Thorndyke’s offer, and was now eager to take up my duties with him.  But it would have been shabby to leave Stillbury to battle alone with this rush of work or to seek the services of a strange assistant.

“I should like to get off as soon as you can spare me,” I replied, “but I’m not going to leave you in the lurch.”

“That’s a good fellow,” said Stillbury.  “I knew you wouldn’t.  Let us have some tea and divide up the work.  Anything of interest going?”

There were one or two unusual cases on the list, and, as we marked off our respective patients, I gave him the histories in brief synopsis.  And then I opened the subject of my mysterious experiences at the house of Mr. Weiss.

“There’s another affair that I want to tell you about; rather an unpleasant business.”

“Oh, dear!” exclaimed Stillbury.  He put down his cup and regarded me with quite painful anxiety.

“It looks to me like an undoubted case of criminal poisoning,” I continued.

Stillbury’s face cleared instantly.  “Oh, I’m glad it’s nothing more than that,” he said with an air of relief.  “I was afraid, it was some confounded woman.  There’s always that danger, you know, when a locum is young and happens—­if I may say so, Jervis—­to be a good-looking fellow.  Let us hear about this case.”

I gave him a condensed narrative of my connection with the mysterious patient, omitting any reference to Thorndyke, and passing lightly over my efforts to fix the position of the house, and wound up with the remark that the facts ought certainly to be communicated to the police.

“Yes,” he admitted reluctantly, “I suppose you’re right.  Deuced unpleasant though.  Police cases don’t do a practice any good.  They waste a lot of time, too; keep you hanging about to give evidence.  Still, you are quite right.  We can’t stand by and see the poor devil poisoned without making some effort.  But I don’t believe the police will do anything in the matter.”

“Don’t you really?”

“No, I don’t.  They like to have things pretty well cut and dried before they act.  A prosecution is an expensive affair, so they don’t care to prosecute unless they are fairly sure of a conviction.  If they fail they get hauled over the coals.”

“But don’t you think they would get a conviction in this case?”

“Not on your evidence, Jervis.  They might pick up something fresh, but, if they didn’t they would fail.  You haven’t got enough hard-baked facts to upset a capable defence.  Still, that isn’t our affair.  You want to put the responsibility on the police and I entirely agree with you.”

“There ought not to be any delay,” said I.