He had some money in his pocket, hardly earned, but still in human justice not withheld. The last thing they wanted was to see him back at Portland. He would nurse every penny of it as if it were a jewel. Beyond this he had his railway ticket to London. It was there he wanted to go, he had said, and thither they had sent him. But not to Soho: no more of Soho for him! * * * * * * * * One wintry afternoon, a certain doctor came striding back from his rounds to his house in Doddington Grove, Kennington. It was a highly respectable street, with substantial dwellings on either side, and a double plantation of lime-trees on the pavement in front to justify to the world its title. The doctor was of a brisk, impatient manner, and he opened his door with a latch-key as if the second the act lost him were a second made unprofitable. Once inside, he turned up the gas in the hall--it was foggy twilight without--and hurriedly examined a slate, for engagements made during his absence. While he was reading, hat on head, his housemaid appeared. “There’s a man waiting in the consulting-room, sir,” she said. The doctor nodded, pondered a case or two, put the slate down, and went to his visitor. “Hey!” he barked. “What’s your name?” The man, who had risen on his’ entrance, stood motionless before him, his left hand pressed heavily upon his right, which, thickly bandaged, it seemed, he held against his chest. The fingers of the exposed hand were scarred and stunted; the face of the man was grey and rigid as a corpse’s--showing a grin of teeth, too; only the eyes in the face were piercingly alive like a crouching cat’s. He muttered something inaudible. “What!” snapped the doctor. “Speak out. I can’t hear you.” Again the stranger murmured. “Hey!” said the doctor testily. “Can’t you speak louder? What is it? An accident--something the matter with your hand?” He was of a quick nervous temperament, and harassed with much business. The figure before him was decent and respectable enough, but quite uneloquent of any sumptuary promise. And time with him meant money. He was opening his lips to speak again, and pretty summarily, to finish, when something in the stranger’s aspect, or attitude, arrested him. In an instant he had leapt, and, after a brief vicious struggle, had wrenched a knife from the man’s right hand. The apparent bandage on that had merely covered, it seemed, a deadly purpose. Geoletti, disarmed, stood quivering slightly, but otherwise impassive. “I see,” said the doctor softly--“I see.” Watchful of the other, he glanced at the blade he had secured. It was a waspish sting of a thing, keen-tempered, folding into a handle which, when needed, became a hilt. “Meant for me?” he inquired, lifting his brows. When bearded by a patient, he became frost and whipcord. “No, no--not.” The words were spoken low, but distinct enough at last. “For whom, then?”