through which I was passing.  And the sense of hearing filled in the details.  Now the hoot of a tug’s whistle told of proximity to the river.  A sudden and brief hollow reverberation announced the passage under a railway arch (which, by the way, happened several times during the journey); and, when I heard the familiar whistle of a railway-guard followed by the quick snorts of a skidding locomotive, I had as clear a picture of a heavy passenger-train moving out of a station as if I had seen it in broad daylight.

I had just finished my pipe and knocked out the ashes on the heel of my boot, when the carriage slowed down and entered a covered way—­as I could tell by the hollow echoes.  Then I distinguished the clang of heavy wooden gates closed behind me, and a moment or two later the carriage door was unlocked and opened.  I stepped out blinking into a covered passage paved with cobbles and apparently leading down to a mews; but it was all in darkness, and I had no time to make any detailed observations, as the carriage had drawn up opposite a side door which was open and in which stood a woman holding a lighted candle.

“Is that the doctor?” she asked, speaking with a rather pronounced German accent and shading the candle with her hand as she peered at me.

I answered in the affirmative, and she then exclaimed: 

“I am glad you have come.  Mr. Weiss will be so relieved.  Come in, please.”

I followed her across a dark passage into a dark room, where she set the candle down on a chest of drawers and turned to depart.  At the door, however, she paused and looked back.

“It is not a very nice room to ask you into,” she said.  “We are very untidy just now, but you must excuse us.  We have had so much anxiety about poor Mr. Graves.”

“He has been ill some time, then?”

“Yes.  Some little time.  At intervals, you know.  Sometimes better, sometimes not so well.”

As she spoke, she gradually backed out into the passage but did not go away at once.  I accordingly pursued my inquiries.

“He has not been seen by any doctor, has he?”

“No,” she answered, “he has always refused to see a doctor.  That has been a great trouble to us.  Mr. Weiss has been very anxious about him.  He will be so glad to hear that you have come.  I had better go and tell him.  Perhaps you will kindly sit down until he is able to come to you,” and with this she departed on her mission.

It struck me as a little odd that, considering his anxiety and the apparent urgency of the case, Mr. Weiss should not have been waiting to receive me.  And when several minutes elapsed without his appearing, the oddness of the circumstance impressed me still more.  Having no desire, after the journey in the carriage, to sit down, I whiled away the time by an inspection of the room.  And a very curious room it was; bare, dirty, neglected and, apparently, unused.  A faded carpet had been flung untidily on the floor.  A small, shabby table stood in the middle of the room; and beyond this, three horsehair-covered chairs and a chest of drawers formed the entire set of furniture.  No pictures hung on the mouldy walls, no curtains covered the shuttered windows, and the dark drapery of cobwebs that hung from the ceiling to commemorate a long and illustrious dynasty of spiders hinted at months of neglect and disuse.