Mortmain

BY ARTHUR TRAIN
NEW YORK CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 1928
Copyright, 1907, by D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
COPYRIGHT, 1905, BY ESS ESS PUBLISHING COMPANY COPYRIGHT, 1905, 1906, 1907, BY THE CURTIS PUBLISHING COMPANY COPYRIGHT, 1906, BY THE METROPOLITAN MAGAZINE COMPANY COPYRIGHT, 1906, BY ASSOCIATED SUNDAY MAGAZINES COPYRIGHT, 1907, BY THE BUTTERICK PUBLISHING COMPANY
Printed in the United States of America
To AMOS ESNESTO AND SANDRO

Sir Penniston Crisp was a man of some sixty active years, whose ruddy cheeks, twinkling blue eyes, and convincingly innocent smile suggested forty. At thirty he had been accounted the most promising young surgeon in London; at forty he had become one of the three leading members of his profession; at fifty he had amassed a fortune and had begun to accept only those cases which involved complications of true scientific interest, or which came to him on the personal application of other distinguished physicians.
Like many another in the medical world whose material wants are guaranteed, he found solace and amusement only in experimentation along new lines of his peculiar hobbies. His days were spent between his book-lined study with its cheery sea-coal fire and his adjacent laboratory, where three assistants, all trained Bachelors of Science, conducted experiments under his personal direction.
His daily life was as well ordered as his career had been. Rising at seven, Sir Penniston partook of a meager breakfast, attended to his trifling personal affairs, read his newspaper, dictated his letters, and by nine was ready to don his uniform and receive his sterilized in struments from his young associate, Scalscope Jermyn, a capable and cheerful soul after Crisp's own heart. An operating theater adjoined the laboratory, and here the baronet made it a point to perform once each week, in the presence of various surgeons who attended by invitation, a few difficult and dangerous operations upon patients sent to him from the City Hospital.