The tall Highlander, bending over him, put one hand on his
shoulder with fatherly interest.

"You don't seem to appreciate the peculiar advantages of my
position as a lunatic," he said. "I could kill you with my left
hand before such a rat as you could so much as squeak. And I
wouldn't be hanged for it."

"I certainly agree with Mr. MacIan," said Turnbull with sobriety
and perfect respectfulness, "that you had better let us see the
head of the institution."

Dr. Quayle got to his feet in a mixture of sudden hysteria and
clumsy presence of mind.

"Oh, certainly," he said with a weak laugh. "You can see the head
of the asylum if you particularly want to." He almost ran out of
the room, and the two followed swiftly on his flying coat tails.
He knocked at an ordinary varnished door in the corridor. When a
voice said, "Come in," MacIan's breath went hissing back through
his teeth into his chest. Turnbull was more impetuous, and opened
the door.

It was a neat and well-appointed room entirely lined with a
medical library. At the other end of it was a ponderous and
polished desk with an incandescent lamp on it, the light of which
was just sufficient to show a slender, well-bred figure in an
ordinary medical black frock-coat, whose head, quite silvered
with age, was bent over neat piles of notes. This gentleman
looked up for an instant as they entered, and the lamplight fell