Athelstan Taylor soon found the doctor in Cazenove Street, who came readily in answer to his summons. It wouldn't do to lose sight of the case, he said. The man, who was quite well known to him as a typical case of Alcoholism, to the police as an habitual drunkard, and to the neighbourhood as always the worse for liquor, might very easily die of collapse if he wasn't carefully nourished when the reaction came. He would be much safer in a Hospital. Often in cases of this sort, life or death would turn on an injection of morphine on the spot. Heart-failure might be very rapid. He spoke as though Mr. Steptoe's decease would be a real calamity. Mr. Taylor, tramping beside him through the snow, tried to shape a thought that hung in his mind. How if he himself, who preached a Resurrection or Hereafter that as like as not this scientific gentleman did not believe in--how if he was less keen to preserve this depraved life, as a chance to clean it up a bit for a wholesomer departure later on, than the doctor in his professional enthusiasm, his sportsmanlike eagerness to win in a game of Therapeutics against Death? He felt a little ashamed of having thought more than once that the miserable victim of vice would be "best out of the way." Out of the way!... where? And then, how did he know that this consensus of all mortals to try and save even the most worthless lives may not be an unconscious tribute to the underlying sense of immortality throughout mankind? Would an honest belief in extinction fight to preserve a life that is a pain to itself and a curse to its neighbours? So thinking, he turned with his companion into Tallack Street. "Last house on the right, isn't it?" said the doctor. What was that policeman doing in front of the last house on the right? Looking about on the snow as though in search for something, and then stooping forward over the low railing to examine the window-fastenings. It was all secure there when Athelstan Taylor came away. He quickened his pace, and the doctor did so too. "Anything wrong, officer?" Both ask the question at once. "Couldn't say, Sir. Be so good as not to tread on these footmarks. I want 'em kept till my relief comes. He'll be here in a few minutes.... No--the window's not been tampered with, so far as I see. That's where it's so queer." All three stand silent a moment. Then both gentlemen exclaim at once that they see. The queerness is clear enough to both. The footsteps on the snow all point away from the window, and a glance shows that there is no corresponding track of an approach to it. None of the three seem to think the mystery soluble, for the moment, and mere speculation is useless. The policeman supplies an additional fact, but does not claim importance for it. The hasp of the window is visibly unclosed through the glass. But--so the officer testifies--they don't shut 'em to, as often as not.