"How could I play the queen when I knew that the
ace was against me?" The phrases came in little
spurts falling back into the dull murmur of
conversation. And then suddenly he heard the
creaking of a door and a step in the hall, and knew
with a tingling mixture of impatience and horror that
the crisis of his life was at hand.

Dr. Horace Selby was a large, portly man with an
imposing presence. His nose and chin were bold and
pronounced, yet his features were puffy, a
combination which would blend more freely with the
wig and cravat of the early Georges than with the
close-cropped hair and black frock-coat of the end of
the nineteenth century. He was clean shaven, for his
mouth was too good to cover--large, flexible, and
sensitive, with a kindly human softening at either
corner which with his brown sympathetic eyes had
drawn out many a shame-struck sinner's secret. Two
masterful little bushy side-whiskers bristled out
from under his ears spindling away upwards to merge
in the thick curves of his brindled hair. To his
patients there was something reassuring in the mere
bulk and dignity of the man. A high and easy bearing
in medicine as in war bears with it a hint of
victories in the past, and a promise of others to
come. Dr. Horace Selby's face was a consolation, and
so too were the large, white, soothing hands, one of
which he held out to his visitor.