The self-announcement, pat as a polysyllable, had a foreseen effect only minimized by the precautionary confidence of Doctor Dollar's manner. "Thanks very much. I've had about enough of doctors." And the door was shutting when the intruder got in a word like a wedge. "Exactly!" Scarth frowned through a chink just wide enough to show both his eyes. It was the intruder's tone that held his hand. "What does that mean?" he demanded with more control. "That I want to see you about the other doctor--this German fellow," returned Dollar, against the grain. But the studious phrase admitted him. "Well, don't raise your voice," said Scarth, lowering his own as he shut the door softly behind them. "I believe I saw you down-stairs outside the bar. So I need only explain that I've just got my bright young man off to sleep, on the other side of those folding-doors." Dollar could not help wondering whether the other room was as good as Scarth's, which was much bigger and better appointed than his own. But he sat down at the oval table under the electrolier, and came abruptly to his point. "About that prescription," he began, and straightway produced it from his pocket. "Well, what about it?" the other queried, but only keenly, as he sat down at the table, too. "Doctor Alt is a very old friend of mine, Mr. Scarth." Mostyn Scarth exhibited the slight but immediate change of front due from gentleman to gentleman on the strength of such a statement. His grim eyes softened with a certain sympathy; but the accession left his gravity the more pronounced. "He is not only a friend," continued Dollar, "but the cleverest and best man I know in my profession. I don't speak from mere loyalty; he was my own doctor before he was my friend. Mr. Scarth, he saved more than my life when every head in Harley Street had been shaken over my case. All the baronets gave me up; but chance or fate brought me here, and this little unknown man performed the miracle they shirked, and made a new man of me off his own bat. I wanted him to come to London and make his fortune; but his work was here, he wouldn't leave it; and here I find him under a sorry cloud. Can you wonder at my wanting to step in and speak up for him, Mr. Scarth?" "On the contrary, I know exactly how you must feel, and am very glad you have spoken," rejoined Mostyn Scarth, cordially enough in all the circumstances of the case. "But the cloud is none of my making, Doctor Dollar, though I naturally feel rather strongly about the matter. But for Schickel, the chemist, I might be seeing a coffin to England at this moment! He's the man who found out the mistake, and has since made all the mischief." "Are you sure it was a mistake, Mr. Scarth?" asked Dollar quietly. "What else?" cried the other, in blank astonishment. "Even Schickel has never suggested that Doctor Alt was trying to commit a murder!"