“I’ll be back in a couple of hours,” the man was saying. “But if he should regain consciousness before that, you must let me know. You’ve got someone to send, haven’t you?” He remained for a moment hesitating, his bowler-hat in one hand and his black bag in the other. His countenance was illuminated by a faint flicker from behind the form of the girl. She must have laid down her candle upon a step of the staircase.

The first impression Wolf received was of an old photograph-album in his grandmother’s drawing-room in Brunswick Terrace; the second, one of a certain hospital-entrance in a street in London. It was later that these impressions explained themselves. The man had the drooping mustache and unintelligent wooden forehead of an old-fashioned army-officer. About his person hung a smell of laudanum or chloroform.

“What is it?” cried Wolf as he approached. “Can I help? Can I do anything?”