I paused in the dusky passage before tapping at the closed door of this room. The whole place was faintly stringent with the atmosphere that comes from a poor habit of ventilation--an atmosphere like that emitted from crumbling old leather-bound folios. A ragged strip of carpet, so trodden up its middle to the very string as to give the impression of a cinder-path running between dully flowering borders, climbed the flight of stairs before me, and stretched itself upon the landing above in an exhausted condition. In a shallow alcove to one side of me stood a gaunt and voiceless old grandfather clock. A gas-browned bust of Pitt, rendered ridiculous by a perfect skull-cap of dust, stood on a bracket over a door opposite and a few anatomical prints of a dark and melancholy cast broke the monotony of the yellow walls. Rendered none the less depressed in my errand by these dismal surroundings, I pulled myself together and tapped roundly on the doctor’s door. No response followed. I knocked again and again, without result. At length I turned the handle and stepped of my own accord into the room. He was sitting at the table, half his body sprawled over it and an empty tumbler rolled from one of his hands. Overhead, the row of murderers’ busts looked down upon him with every variety of unclean expression, and seemed to prick their ears with sightless rapture over that bestial music of his soul. The doors of a high cabinet, that in other brief visits I had never seen but closely locked, now stood open behind him, revealing row upon row of shelves, whereon hundreds of coins of many metals lay nicely arranged upon cotton wool. A few of these, also, lay about him on the table, and it was evident that a drunken slumber had overcome him while reviewing his mighty collection. So deep was he in stupor that it was not until I hammered and shook the very table that he so much as stirred, and it was only after I had slipped round and jogged him roughly on the shoulder that he came to himself. Then he dragged his long body up, swaying a little at first, and turning a stupid glazed eye on me two or three times and from me to the scattered coins and back again. Suddenly he scrambled to his feet and backed from me. “Thieves!” he yelled. “Thieves!” “That’ll do,” I said, coolly. “I’m not the thief in this house, Dr. Crackenthorpe.” “What are you doing here?” he cried in a furious voice. “How did you get in? What do you want?” “I want a word with you--I’ll tell you what when you’re quieter. As to getting in? I knocked half a dozen times and could get no answer. So I walked in.” “Curse the baggage!” he muttered. “Can’t I rely upon one of them? I’ll twist her pretty neck for this.” “You need twist nothing on my account. If I had failed to catch you now I would have dogged you for the opportunity.” “Oh, that’s it, is it?” he said, with a laugh and a savage sneer. “Well, state your business and be off.”