“You will, of course, let me know if any fresh facts come to light,” he said, as Hanslet rose to take his leave. “Meanwhile, I will consider the matter. If I come to any definite conclusions I will let you know. Good-night, and pray accept my most sincere thanks for presenting me with a most absorbing problem.”

¹ See The Ellerby Case by John Rhode. [↩︎]

Chapter XIV.
The Morlandson Trial

The Professor came down to breakfast next morning looking even more weary than on the previous day. Harold, looking at him anxiously, guessed that he had hardly slept at all during the night. Some absorbing train of thought, whether started by Hanslet’s story of the previous evening or not, had taken possession of his brain. But, in spite of his weariness, there was a queer gleam in the piercing eyes behind the powerful spectacles, which Harold knew from past experience to be the light of battle.

“I have some work for you to-day, my boy,” he said, as soon as the meal was over. “I want you to go to the British Museum and look up the reports of the trials for murder at the Old Bailey during the first ten years of the present century. Among them you will find the trial of a doctor for the murder of one of his patients by giving him an overdose of morphia. I believe that the doctor’s name began with an M, and I fancy that his patient had a title. More than this I cannot tell you, my memory, I regret to say, is not what it used to be. I want you to make a précis of that trial and of the sentence.”

“Very good, sir,” replied Harold, and forthwith started on his quest. He could not guess the purpose for which the Professor required this information, but it could obviously have nothing to do with these intriguing murders in Praed Street which Hanslet had described. Unless, perhaps, the Professor had seen some parallel between the methods of the unknown criminal and those of this vague doctor whose name began with an M. You never could predict the direction from which the Professor would approach a problem. All that you could be certain of was that it would be different from the one you anticipated.

Arrived at the Museum, where he was a frequent visitor on similar errands, he went carefully through the index to the Law Reports. It was not until he came to the year 1906, that he met with anything which corresponded to the data which the Professor had given him. Then he found a reference to the trial of one Doctor Morlandson for the murder of Lord Whatley. This must be the case to which his employer had referred. He turned up the records, and proceeded to make a careful abstract.

It appeared that Lord Whatley had been a man of middle age, and of some considerable wealth. Dr. Morlandson was his regular medical attendant, and in 1905 he had been compelled to warn his patient that he was suffering from cancer, and that though an operation might be successful, there was grave doubt that it would permanently remove the source of the trouble. However, Lord Whatley consented to undergo the operation. He was removed to a nursing home, and a specialist was called in. The patient went through the ordeal satisfactorily, and after a while he returned home.

But, by the beginning of the following year, the symptoms reasserted themselves, and Dr. Morlandson informed his patient, who insisted that he should be told the truth, that nothing more could be done, and that Lord Whatley had nothing to look forward to but perhaps a year or two of suffering. The relations between the two men were rather those of close friendship than of doctor and patient, and, subsequent to Dr. Morlandson’s pronouncement, they saw a great deal of one another. Morlandson devoted as much time as he could spare from his practice to sitting with Lord Whatley, who was a childless widower and did not encourage the visits of his friends and relations.

By the end of February it appeared that the disease was progressing even more rapidly than Dr. Morlandson had anticipated. He administered frequent injections of morphia, and his patient was rarely conscious. Morlandson continued to spend the greater part of his time with him, and in Lord Whatley’s brief intervals of consciousness his doctor, and the nurses who had been called in, were the only people he spoke to.