XIV THORNDYKE LAYS THE MINE
XV THORNDYKE EXPLODES THE MINE
XVI AN EXPOSITION AND A TRAGEDY




Chapter I

The Mysterious Patient


As I look back through the years of my association with John Thorndyke,
I am able to recall a wealth of adventures and strange experiences such
as falls to the lot of very few men who pass their lives within hearing
of Big Ben. Many of these experiences I have already placed on record;
but it now occurs to me that I have hitherto left unrecorded one that
is, perhaps, the most astonishing and incredible of the whole series; an
adventure, too, that has for me the added interest that it inaugurated
my permanent association with my learned and talented friend, and marked
the close of a rather unhappy and unprosperous period of my life.

Memory, retracing the journey through the passing years to the
starting-point of those strange events, lands me in a shabby little
ground-floor room in a house near the Walworth end of Lower Kennington
Lane. A couple of framed diplomas on the wall, a card of Snellen's
test-types and a stethoscope lying on the writing-table, proclaim it a
doctor's consulting-room; and my own position in the round-backed chair
at the said table, proclaims me the practitioner in charge.