“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.”