‘No,’ answered Mr. Sivewright doggedly. ‘I am not so childish or so weak-minded as to ask another man to corroborate the evidence of my own senses. I tell you, Davoren, the thing is. If I believed in ghosts the matter would trouble me little enough. All the phantoms that were ever supposed to make night hideous might range these passages, and glide up and down yonder staircase at their pleasure. But I do not believe in the supernatural; and the sounds that I have heard are distinctly human.’ ‘Let me hear them too.’ ‘No, I tell you,’ answered the patient with smothered anger; ‘I will have no one to play the spy upon my slumber. If this is the delusion of an enfeebled brain, I have sense enough left to find out the falsehood for myself. Besides, the intruder, if there be one, cannot do me any harm. Yonder door is securely locked every night.’ ‘Can you trust the lock?’ ‘Do you think I should have put a bad one to a room that contains such treasures? No, the lock is one I chose myself, and would baffle a practised burglar. There is the same kind of lock on yonder door, communicating with the dressing-room. I turn the key in both with my own hand every night after Wincher has left me. I am still strong enough to move about the room, though I feel my strength lessening day by day. God pity me when I lie helpless on yonder bed, as I must do soon.’ ‘Nay, my dear sir, let us hope for a favourable change ere long.’ ‘I have almost left off hoping,’ answered the old man wearily. ‘All the drugs in your surgery will not cure me. I am tired of trying first this medicine and then that. For some time, indeed, I believed that you understood my case; that your medicines were of some good to me. Within the last three weeks they have seemed only to aggravate my disorder.’ Lucius took up a medicine bottle from the little table by the bed half absently. It was empty. ‘When did you take your last dose?’ he asked. ‘Half-an-hour ago.’ ‘I will try to find you a new tonic; something that shall not produce the nausea you have complained of lately. I cannot understand how this mixture should have had such an effect; but it is just possible you may have an antipathy to quinine. I will give you a medicine without any quinine.’ Mr. Sivewright gave an impatient sigh, expressive of non-belief in the whole faculty of medicine. ‘Do what you please with me,’ he said. ‘If you do not succeed in lengthening my life, I suppose I may depend upon your not shortening it. And as you charge me nothing for your services, I have no right to complain if their value corresponds with the rate of your recompense.’ ‘I am sorry to see you have lost confidence in me, sir,’ said Lucius, somewhat wounded, yet willing to forgive a sick man’s petulance.