Page:The Death-Doctor.djvu/171



BOUT two years after I had started practice in Cromwell Road, I found it necessary to keep an assistant. This need implicated me, a little later on, in a trial of wits which became ultimately a duel to the death between myself and a remarkably clever young man, who possessed that scorn and utter disregard of the modern code of morality, which I flattered myself I had never come across except in my own personality.

You and I, Laurence, have frequently been opponents, and sometimes partners in the only two great games of skill played in England; there are others much more difficult played abroad: I mean whist and chess. Chess, as we have often remarked, is a game of practically mathematical certainty, and you can each see both sides of the game. But whist is different: it does not require that foresight and