"I cannot tell you. You may take the cleverest man in London to see her; but it is a question if that man will perceive the danger so clearly as to take prompt measures. In these cases there is always room for doubt; and a man would rather doubt his own perceptions than believe the hellish truth. It is by this natural hesitation so many lives are lost. While the doctor deliberates, the patient dies. And then, if the secret of the death transpires--by circumstantial evidence, perhaps, which never came to the doctor's knowledge,--there is a public outcry. The doctor's practice is ruined, and his heart broken. The outcry would have been still louder if he had told the truth in time to save the patient, and had not been able to prove his words. You think me a coward and a scoundrel because I dared not utter my suspicion when I saw Mr. Halliday dying. While it was only a suspicion it would have been certain ruin for me to give utterance to it. The day came when it was almost a conviction. I went back to that man Sheldon's house, determined to insist upon the calling in of a physician who would have made that conviction certainty. My resolution came too late. It is possible that Sheldon had perceived my suspicions, and had hastened matters. My patient was dead before I reached the house." "How am I to save her?" repeated Valentine, with the same helpless manner. He could not bring himself to consider Tom Halliday's death. The subject was too far away from him--remote as the dim shadows of departed centuries. In all the universe there were but two figures standing out in lurid brightness against the dense night of chaos--a helpless girl held in the clutches of a secret assassin; and it was his work to rescue her. "What am I to do?" he asked. "Tell me what I am to do." "What it may be wisest to do I cannot tell you," answered Mr. Burkham, almost as helplessly as the other had asked the question. "I can give you the name of the best man to get to the bottom of such a case--a man who gave evidence on the Fryar trial--Jedd. You have heard of Jedd, I daresay. You had better go straight to Jedd, and take him down with you to Miss Halliday. His very name will frighten Sheldon." "I will go at once. Stay--the address! Where am I to find Dr. Jedd?" "In Burlington Row. But there is one thing to be considered." "What?" "The interference of Jedd may only make that man desperate. He may hasten matters now as he hastened matters before. If you had seen his coolness at that time; if you had seen him, as I saw him, standing by that poor fellow's deathbed, comforting him--yes, with friendly speeches--laughing and joking, watching the agonising pain and the miserable sickness, and all the dreary wretchedness of such a death, and _never_ swerving from his work; if you had seen him, you would understand why I am afraid to advise you. That man was as desperate as he was cool when he murdered his friend. He will be more reckless this time." "Why?"