pains in the region of his heart. Neither man had tasted food for twenty-four hours, and both were cold and faint.

Diamond, however, took the man’s arm and managed to get him back to his room. There he examined him carefully, and having diagnosed the case, recognised the extreme danger, but told the patient nothing decisive.

He saw the proprietor, and from him borrowed three francs. Then he wrote a prescription which he took round to the big Pharmacie du Nord, at the corner.

The mixture revived the invalid, but in the night he collapsed again. At mid-day Diamond obtained a cup of bouillon from a cheap restaurant near, and brought it to the man who had refused his name. And he had now sat by the bedside with his fingers upon the patient’s pulse all through that short gloomy afternoon.

“I’m sorry things are so bad as they are,” the Doctor was saying, as he handed the invalid the big blue envelope, for he had, an hour before, told him the truth. “You ought to have had advice long ago.”

The dying man smiled faintly and shook his head.

“I was warned in Stockholm,” he answered in a low tone. “But I didn’t heed. I—I was a fool.”

The Doctor sighed. What could he say? He had recognised that the poor fellow was already beyond human aid. He had probably been suffering from the affection of the heart for the past six or seven years—perhaps more.

“And you are certain?” asked the ugly little man at last, again taking the thin, bony hand in his. “Are you quite certain that you wish to send no message to anybody?”

For a few seconds the prostrate man struggled hard to speak.

“No,” he succeeded in gasping at last. “No message—to—anybody.”

The Doctor pursed his lips at the rebuff. The eccentricity of the stranger had become more marked in those moments of finality.

His thin, nerveless fingers were fumbling with the bulky envelope, which seemed to contain a quantity of folded papers.

“Doctor,” he whispered at last, “I—I want to burn—all these—all—every one of them. Burn them entirely.”

“As you wish, my dear friend,” responded the hunchback, eyeing the envelope eagerly, and wondering what it might contain. 

 Prev. P 4/211 next