Dr. Shaw, at whose house door Hanbury had left Oscar Leigh, was a fresh-coloured, light haired, baldheaded, energetic man of about fifty-five. He was always in a state of astonishment, and the spectacles he wore over his green grey eyes seemed ever on the point of being thrust forward out of their position by the large round prominent dancing eyes of their wearer. He was a bachelor and had a poor practice, but one which he preferred to hold in undisputed ownership, rather than increase at the sacrifice of liberty in taking a wife.
He had just come back from his round of morning visits and was sitting down to his simple early dinner, as Leigh knocked. When he heard who the visitor was he rose instantly and went into the small bare surgery, the front ground-floor room.
"Bless my soul, Mr. Leigh, what's the matter?"
Leigh was sitting in a wooden elbow chair breathing heavily, noisily, irregularly. "I have come," he said in gasps and snatches, "I have come to die."
"Eh! Bless my soul, what are you saying?" cried the doctor approaching the clockmaker so as to get the light upon his own back.
"I have come to die, I tell you."
"But that is an opinion, and it is I that am to give the opinion--not you. You are to state the facts, I am to lay down the law. What's the matter?"
"In this case, I am judge and jury. The facts and the law are all against me. I have had another seizure a few minutes ago," he laid his hand on his chest. "In the excitement I kept up, but I know 'tis all over. You will remember your promise about the quicklime. I never let anyone pry into the machinery of my clock, and I won't have any foolish young jackanapes prying into the works of this old carcase. You will fill up the box with quicklime?"
"Not yet anyway. What happened. Where do you feel queer?"
Leigh pointed to his chest a little at the left of the middle line.