ath on the half-landing. In
the end we gained a cosey library, with an open door leading to a
bedroom beyond. But the effort had deprived my poor companion of all
power of speech; his laboring lungs shrieked like the wind; he could
just point to the door by which we had entered, and which I shut in
obedience to his gestures, and then to the decanter and its accessories
on the table where he had left them overnight. I gave him nearly half
a glassful, and his paroxysm subsided a little as he sat hunched up in
a chair.

"I was a fool ... to turn in," he blurted in more whispers between
longer pauses. "Lying down is the devil ... when you're in for a real
bad night. You might get me the brown cigarettes ... on the table in
there. That's right ... thanks awfully ... and now a match!"

The asthmatic had bitten off either end of the stramonium cigarette,
and was soon choking himself with the crude fumes, which he inhaled in
desperate gulps, to exhale in furious fits of coughing. Never was more
heroic remedy; it seemed a form of lingering suicide; but by degrees
some slight improvement became apparent, and at length the sufferer was
able to sit upright, and to drain his glass with a sigh of rare relief.
I sighed also, for I had witnessed a struggle for dear life by a man in
the flower of his youth, whose looks I liked, whose smile came like the
sun through the first break in his torments, and whose first words were
to thank me for the little I had done in bare humanity.

That made me feel the thing I was. But the feeling put me on my guard.
And I was not unready for the remark which followed a more exhaustive
scrutiny than I had hitherto sustained.

"Do you know," said young Medlicott, "that you aren't a bit like the
detective of my dreams?"

"Only to proud to hear it," I replied. "There would be no point in my
being in plain clothes if I looked exactly what I was."

My companion reassured me with a wheezy laugh.

"There's something in that," said he, "although I do congratulate the
insurance people on getting a man of your class to do their dirty work.
And I congratulate myself," he was quick enough to add, "on having you
to see me through as bad a night as I've had for a long time. You're
like flowers in the depths of winter. Got a drink? That's right! I
suppose you didn't happen to bring down an evening paper?"

I said I had brought one, but had unfortunately left it in the train.

"What about the Test