man reeled, tried to
save himself, and fell against the consulting-room door, which somehow
flew open, revealing the sleeping figure of Mark Heath on the couch.

"My dear sir--faint?"

"I beg your pardon, doctor," said the sinister-looking man. "Sick as a
great girl. I can bear pain, but to see him like that turned me over.
No, no, see to him; I'm better now."

The doctor continued his task, while the door swung to once more.

"Still feel faint?" said the doctor, without looking up.

"Oh, no; it's all gone now. I really am ashamed."

"Nothing to be ashamed of, my dear sir. It is a man's nature. Now I
shall be obliged to ask one of you to lend me a little assistance here."

The bearded man stood ready, and exchanged a glance with his
Mephistophelean companion, who was behind the doctor now.

"Ah!"

Dr Chartley uttered a quick ejaculation, for, as he bent over his
patient, the man behind struck him a heavy blow with a short thick
life-preserver, and, quick almost as lightning, delivered another
crashing stroke on the back of the head.

Without so much as a groan, merely a catching at the air, the doctor
fell forward upon his supposed patient, and then rolled with a dull
heavy sound upon the carpet, to lie motionless--to all appearance dead.

"Yah! what a butcher you are, Rogers!" said the sham patient, in a
querulous high-pitched tone.

"Hold your row! Quick! Listen at that door."

The sham patient sprang to the door at the end of the passage, opened it
softly, and stood listening.

"All right," he whispered, "still as death."

"Curse you! hold your row about death," whispered the other as the door
was closed. "Lock it."

"I was going to," said the younger man, turning the key softly. "Is he
there, Harry?"

"Yes; all right," came in a whisper from the bearded man, who had softly
opened the consulting-room door and peered in at the sleeping figure
upon the couch. "Quick! come on."

The man addressed as Rogers had stooped down and then gone on one knee,
thrusting the life-preserver into his pocket while he examined the
doctor, and not noticing that it slipped out onto the skirt of his coat,
and rolled aside as he finished his examination, and satisfied himself
that there was nothing to be apprehended there.

He started up, and followed his companion on tiptoe, and the next minute
they were gazing down at the man they had tracked from the
diamond-fields and run to earth at last.

"Hah!" ex