He snapped his fingers. "Lethodyne! pooh! I have lost interest in it.
Impracticable! It is not fitted for the human species."

"Why so? Number Fourteen proves--"

He interrupted me with an impatient wave of his hand; then he rose and
paced up and down the room testily. After a pause, he spoke again. "The
weak point of lethodyne is this: nobody can be trusted to say WHEN it
may be used--except Nurse Wade,--which is NOT science."

For the first time in my life, I had a glimmering idea that I distrusted
Sebastian. Hilda Wade was right--the man was cruel. But I had never
observed his cruelty before--because his devotion to science had blinded
me to it.



CHAPTER II

THE EPISODE OF THE GENTLEMAN WHO HAD FAILED FOR EVERYTHING


One day, about those times, I went round to call on my aunt, Lady
Tepping. And lest you accuse me of the vulgar desire to flaunt my fine
relations in your face, I hasten to add that my poor dear old aunt is
a very ordinary specimen of the common Army widow. Her husband, Sir
Malcolm, a crusty old gentleman of the ancient school, was knighted
in Burma, or thereabouts, for a successful raid upon naked natives, on
something that is called the Shan frontier. When he had grown grey
in the service of his Queen and country, besides earning himself