'Well, I'm Elizabeth Renshaw. You wrote to me. I got your letter sent
on from the Registry Office along with ninety others. But I liked
yours the best, so I thought there'd be no 'arm in coming to see----'

'Come in, Elizabeth,' I said earnestly. 'I'm glad you liked my letter.'

I began to wonder if I was not a great writer after all.




CHAPTER II

I piloted Elizabeth in and bade her be seated. Strangely enough, my
usual hopeful expectations entirely deserted me at that moment. I felt
that the interview would be fruitless. They say hope springs eternal
in the human breast, but my breast didn't feel human just then. It was
throbbing with savage and sanguinary thoughts. Perhaps it was the
eggs. Many animals are rendered ferocious by an over-diet of meat. I
can testify (so can Henry) that an over-diet of eggs has exactly the
same effect on human beings. I think they stimulate the wrong kind of
phagocytes. They can make the mildest and most forgiving person wild
and vindictive. Henry always declares, when he reads of a man
murdering his wife under exceptionally brutal circumstances, that she
must have been giving him too many scrambled eggs. In fact, he wrote
articles about it, entitled 'The Psychology of Diet,' in the Sunday
papers, signed 'By a Physician.'

Henry is not a physician. Neither is he 'An Eminent Surgeon,' 'A