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Page 5
"Sit down, Sir Charles," said Harley with quiet geniality.
"Officially, my working day is ended; but if nothing comes of
your visit beyond a chat it will have been very welcome.
Calcutta, was it not, where we last met?"
"It was," replied Sir Charles, placing his hat and cane upon the
table and sitting down rather wearily in a big leather armchair
which Harley had pushed forward. "If I presume upon so slight an
acquaintance, I am sorry, but I must confess that only the fact
of having met you socially encouraged me to make this visit."
He raised his eyes to Harley's face and gazed at him with that
peculiarly searching look which belongs to members of his
profession; but mingled with it was an expression of almost
pathetic appeal, of appeal for understanding, for sympathy of
some kind.
"Go on, Sir Charles," said Harley. He pushed forward a box of
cigars. "Will you smoke?"
"Thanks, no," was the answer.
Sir Charles evidently was oppressed by some secret trouble, thus
Harley mused silently, as, taking out a tin of tobacco from a
cabinet beside him, he began in leisurely manner to load a briar.
In this he desired to convey that he treated the visit as that of
a friend, and also, since business was over, that Sir Charles
might without scruple speak at length and at leisure of whatever
matters had brought him there.
"Very well, then," began the surgeon; "I am painfully conscious
that the facts which I am in a position to lay before you are
very scanty and unsatisfactory."
Paul Harley nodded encouragingly.
"If this were not so," he explained, "you would have no occasion
to apply to me, Sir Charles. It is my business to look for facts.
Naturally, I do not expect my clients to supply them."
Sir Charles slowly nodded his head, and seemed in some measure to
recover confidence.
"Briefly, then," he said, "I believe my life is in danger."
"You mean that there is someone who desires your death?"
"I do."
"H'm," said Harley, replacing the tin in the cupboard and
striking a match. "Even if the facts are scanty, no doubt you
have fairly substantial grounds for such a suspicion?"
"I cannot say that they are substantial, Mr. Harley. They are
rather more circumstantial. Frankly, I have forced myself to come
here, and now that I have intruded upon your privacy, I realize
my difficulties more keenly than ever."
The expression of embarrassment upon the speaker's face had grown
intense; and now he paused, bending forward in his chair. He
seemed in his glance to appeal for patience on the part of his
hearer, and Harley, lighting his pipe, nodded in understanding
fashion. He was the last man in the world to jump to conclusions.
He had learned by bitter experience that lightly to dismiss such
cases as this of Sir Charles as coming within the province of
delusion, was sometimes tantamount to refusing aid to a man in
deadly peril.
"You are naturally anxious for the particulars," Sir Charles
presently resumed. "They bear, I regret to say, a close
resemblance to the symptoms of a well-known form of
hallucination. In short, with one exception, they may practically
all be classed under the head of surveillance."
"Surveillance," said Paul Harley. "You mean that you are more or
less constantly followed?"
"I do."
"And what is your impression of this follower?"
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