I had been less dismayed than most men of my age perhaps—particularly most medical students—would have been by learning that my life had been under the microscope for a month. I had nothing very serious to reproach myself with. The memory of a secret love affair, an unhappy one, alas! had served to keep me clear of the most dangerous of all the snares that life sets for youth. It was my good luck never to have tasted, and never to have felt the wish to taste, anything in the way of alcohol, and to be able to sit with nothing stronger than a cup of strong coffee in front of me in the midst of the most riotous company. I believe it was this exceptional merit that turned the scale in my favour with Sir James Ponsonby. Gambling had equally little appeal for me, and I took no interest whatever in that noble animal the horse. My real vice was love of excitement for its own sake. One prize-fight had more attraction for me than a hundred cricket-matches. It was in search of sensation that I was drawn into the night life of London. I was haunted by the mystery of silent streets and shadowed courts. Like Stevenson, I felt that life ought to be a series of adventures beginning in Leicester Square. The Press Club and the Chelsea Art Club were the two poles of my romantic sphere, and I revelled in the society of men who seemed to me to be leading lives more mysterious than mine.
It appeared that this was the weakness which stood in my way with the Government Department I was to serve. Tarleton had ceased to swing his watch, and had given me a very meaning glance as he came to the decisive point.
“Sir James has made it a condition of your appointment that it shall be a resident one. You will have to take up your quarters with me. I shall have a telephone installed in your room for you to take the night calls. And I shall depend on you not to trouble me with them unless I am really wanted.”
My face must have fallen as I listened to this stipulation, for I saw an answering shade on the doctor’s brow. I felt that a good deal of the gilt would be taken off the gingerbread if I had to surrender my personal freedom and abandon my favourite haunts to lead a regular life under my employer’s roof, and under his surveillance; for, of course, that was what it came to. My chief inducement to take up the career of an analyst instead of a general practitioner had been the greater freedom I should enjoy. I had dreaded the idea of having to settle in a provincial town or a prim residential suburb, where I should have to keep regular hours, go to church in a black coat on Sundays, act as sidesman, and generally put on all the airs of respectability. It would be almost as great a wrench to give up my artist and journalist friends, in whose company I had had such jolly times, and go to bed every night just as the real day was beginning, under the watchful eyes of my chief.
I fancy Sir Frank himself felt some sympathy with me, though he was too wise to express it.
“A man must expect to be judged to some extent by the company he keeps,” he had hinted. “You can’t expect the head of a Department like the Home Office to feel easy at the idea of entrusting important secrets to a young man who spends his nights, I won’t say in disreputable company, but at all events in circles where a good many adventurers are found. These people”—the bitter note came back into his voice—“these people hate the shoulders on which they have climbed. They govern the empire which the Raleighs and the Clives have gained for them, but they don’t want any more Clives and Raleighs. They threw Burton away; they wouldn’t use Gordon till it was too late—Faugh!” He swallowed his disgust with an effort, and became almost stern. “Now, my boy, this is a great opportunity for you, and you must take it. You must forget that you are a genius, and put your neck into the collar for a few years. At the end of that time you will have a reputation, and you can do what you like within reasonable limits. I expect you to trust yourself to me.”
And, of course, I had. He had taken me to the Home Office and formally presented me to the Under Secretary, and I found myself appointed an Assistant Medical Adviser, detailed for duty under the orders of Sir Frank Tarleton, with a salary that seemed riches in advance.
Perhaps I had found my work a little disappointing since. The night calls had not been numerous, and they had grown fewer after the first month or two, as though Tarleton’s clients or patients, I hardly know which to call them, had found out that it was no use expecting him to turn out any longer, if the case was one that I could deal with. Most of my time was passed in the laboratory in Montague Street, carrying out analyses under his directions, and improving my knowledge of rare poisons, of which he had formed what was probably the finest collection in the world. But of really sensational cases, involving criminal suspicion and mystery, there had not been one before that fateful summons from the Domino Club.
But I dared not hesitate longer in delivering it. Every moment now would only make matters worse. I crossed the landing and knocked firmly on the closed door.
The answer was instantaneous—“Come in!”