"By what right----"
"Steady does it, doctor. If you talk of rights we shall talk of wrongs. That's a sensible man. On go the trousers, on goes the waistcoat, on goes the coat, and we're ready for business. Now, how shall it be? Friends or foes? You don't answer. Very good. We'll give you time. Take a chair, and make yourself comfortable. No, doctor, no; don't take your whisky neat; as an experienced toper myself I insist upon putting a little water into it. And we'll pour half the spirit back into the bottle. Moderation and economy--that's the order of the day. You can't make up your mind to speak. Very well; we'll see if we can loosen your tongue. I intend to make a clean breast of it, and you may feel disposed presently to follow a good example. Give me your best attention, I am going to open the case, and if I make mistakes I'm open to correction. Some few years ago there lived in the north of London a gentleman--we'll be polite, if nothing else--a gentleman and his stepdaughter, name of the gentleman Nisbet, name of the stepdaughter Beatrice. The house they inhabited was in Lamb's Terrace, and a gentleman of means could not have selected a more desolate locality to reside in. Miss Beatrice's mother was dead, and in her will she appointed her second husband--she couldn't very well appoint her first, doctor--guardian to her child, with a handsome provision for the maintenance and education of the young lady. The bulk of her fortune she left to her daughter, who was to come into possession of it when she was of age. It was a large fortune, some fifty or sixty thousand pounds, I believe, and I wish such a bit of luck had fallen to my share, but we can't all be born with silver spoons in our mouths, can we, doctor? That this fortune should have been left to the lady instead of the gentleman annoyed and angered him, and he determined to have the fingering of it. Now, how could that be managed? There was only one way, according to his thinking, and that was, to get rid of the lady, because it was set down in the will that, in the event of the young lady's death before she came of age, the money should revert to him. He laid his plans artfully, but there was a flaw in them, as you will presently confess. I don't pretend to understand how it was that he set about compassing his desire in the crooked way he did. Perhaps he found the young lady hard to manage; because he had some sort of sneaking feeling for her, perhaps he thought it would not be half so bad if he got rid of someone else in her place; and so contrived that it should be believed it was his own stepdaughter who was dead, instead of a poor, friendless young girl of her own age and build."
Dr. Cooper shifted uneasily in his chair, and an expression of amazement stole into his face.
"I see that I am interesting you. This poor friendless girl was in his service in Lamb's Terrace at the time, her name, Molly. So what did this Nisbet do but send his stepdaughter from the house, and take a ticket for her to some part of the Continent, precise place unknown, but doubtless where she was pretty well out of the world. He was to follow her, and they were to live in foreign parts. Meanwhile the poor girl Molly was left in the London house, and on the morning of his intended departure was found dead, not in her own bed, but in the young lady's, with the young lady's clothes on and about her. The cause of death was said to be asphyxiation by an escape of gas in the young lady's bedroom. The Nisbets kept no society in London, and had no friends or acquaintances, so there was no one to dispute his statement that it was his stepdaughter who was dead. Now, he knew, that an inquest would have to be held, and that a certificate of the cause of death would have to be produced, so what does he do but go to a miserable wretch of a doctor or apothecary living or starving--the latter, I suspect--in the neighborhood of Lamb's Terrace, and by plausible words and bribe induce him to give this necessary death certificate. Name of doctor, Cooper. Fire away, doctor, if you've anything to say."
"It has been done again and again," said Dr. Cooper, sucking his parched lips. "But I can't speak till I've had a drink."
"Here it is," said Rivers, mixing a glass, sparing with the whisky and liberal with the water, and handing it to the wretched man. "Don't swallow it all at once; moisten your lips with it now and then."
"It has been done again and again," repeated Dr. Cooper. "A doctor is called in who has not attended the patient; he sees that the cause of death is unmistakable, and he gives the certificate. It is not a crime."
"I am not so sure of that," said Rivers, in a dry tone. "Anyway it is too late now to prove the true cause of poor Molly's, death, for the body has been cremated."
"It was not a case of illness," continued Dr. Cooper; "no doctor had been in the house to see the girl before that morning, and I only did what any other doctor would have done."
"You did," corrected Rivers, "what no respectable doctor would dream of doing."