"The 'young rogue,'" he remarked, "does not appear to me to have been
very happy in his choice of a solicitor. By the way, Jervis, I
understand you are out of employment just now?"

"That is so," I answered.

"Would you care to help me--as a matter of business, of course--to work
up this case? I have a lot of other work on hand and your assistance
would be of great value to me."

I said, with great truth, that I should be delighted.

"Then," said Thorndyke, "come round to breakfast to-morrow and we will
settle the terms, and you can commence your duties at once. And now let
us light our pipes and finish our yarns as though agitated clients and
thick-headed solicitors had no existence."




CHAPTER III

A LADY IN THE CASE


When I arrived at Thorndyke's chambers on the following morning, I found
my friend already hard at work. Breakfast was laid at one end of the
table, while at the other stood a microscope of the pattern used for
examining plate-cultures of micro-organisms, on the wide stage of which
was one of the cards bearing six thumb-prints in blood. A condenser