"A certificate of death signed by a physician beyond reproach?"

"Yes, that would do. But you couldn't get a medical man like that to
commit felony."

"No, but we could trick him into it," Steel exclaimed. "In my story a
fraud is perpetrated to blind the villain and to deprive him of his
weapons. It is a case of the end justifying the means. But it is one
thing, my dear lady, to commit fraud actually and to perpetrate it in a
novel. In the latter case you can defy the police, but unfortunately you
and I are dealing with real life. If I am to help you I must be a party
to a felony."

"But you will! You are not going to draw back now? Mr. Steel, I have
saved your home. You are a happy man compared to what you were two hours
ago. If the risk is great you have brains and imagination to get out of
danger. Show me how to do it, and the rest shall be mine. You have never
seen me, you know nothing, not even the name of the person who called you
over the telephone. You have only to keep your own counsel, and if I wade
in blood to my end you are safe. Tell me how I can die, disappear,
leaving that one man to believe I am no more. And don't make it too
ingenious. Don't forget that you promised to tell me a rational way out
of the difficulty. How can it be done?"

"In my pocket I have a cutting from the _Times_, which contains a
chapter from the history of a medical student who is alone in London. It
closely resembles my plot. He says he has no friends, and he deems it
prudent for reasons we need not discuss to let the world assume that he
is dead. The rest is tolerably easy. He disguises himself and goes to a
doctor of repute, whom he asks to come and see his brother--_i.e.,_