s decanting a
bottle of claret by means of a glass syphon: "you forgot that, sir."

"Yes, I forgot that, Polton," said Thorndyke, "but I see you have not."
He glanced towards a small table that had been placed near the fire and
set out with the requisites for our meal.

"Tell me," said Thorndyke, as we made the initial onslaught on the
products of Polton's culinary experiments, "what has been happening to
you since you left the hospital six years ago?"

"My story is soon told," I answered, somewhat bitterly. "It is not an
uncommon one. My funds ran out, as you know, rather unexpectedly. When I
had paid my examination and registration fees the coffer was absolutely
empty, and though, no doubt, a medical diploma contains--to use
Johnson's phrase--the potentiality of wealth beyond the dreams of
avarice, there is a vast difference in practice between the potential
and the actual. I have, in fact, been earning a subsistence, sometimes
as an assistant, sometimes as a _locum tenens_. Just now I've got no
work to do, and so have entered my name on Turcival's list of
eligibles."

Thorndyke pursed up his lips and frowned.

"It's a wicked shame, Jervis," said he presently, "that a man of your
abilities and scientific acquirements should be frittering away his
time on odd jobs like some half-qualified wastrel."

"It is," I agreed. "My merits are grossly undervalued by a stiff-necked
and obtuse generation. But what would you have, my learned brother? If
poverty steps behind you and claps the occulting bushel over your thirty
thousand candle-power luminary, your brilliancy is apt to be obscured."

"Yes, I suppose that is so," grunted Thorndyke, and he remained for a
time in deep thought.

"And now," said I, "let us have your promised explanation. I am
positively frizzling with curiosity to know what chain of circumstances
has converted John Evelyn Thorndyke from a medical practitioner into a
luminary of the law."

Thorndyke smiled indulgently.

"The fact is," said he, "that no such transformation has occurred. John
Evelyn Thorndyke is still a medical practitioner."

"What, in a wig and gown!" I exclaimed.

"Yes, a mere sheep in wolf's clothing," he replied. "I will tell you how
it has come about. After you left the hospital, six years ago, I stayed
on, taking up any small appointments that were going--assistant
demonstrator--or curatorships and such like--hung about the chemical and
physical laboratories, the museum an