Page:The Death-Doctor.djvu/289

Rh on potato, the bacillus of glanders—a malady which is extremely difficult to diagnose. Fortunately, the truth was quite unsuspected, or they would have applied mallein, and by its means discovered the inoculation.

Thus did I assist the son of Heinrich Otto, the expert toxicologist, out of the world, and on the day of his burial in Highgate Cemetery, I became the richer by five thousand pounds.

I have often wondered what became of old Mrs. Netherall. I have never seen her since that afternoon when we parted outside my bank in Fleet Street, where I had paid in the bank-notes which she handed to me in acknowledgment of my services.

My vigil upon that tenantless house in Avenue Road was certainly a long and tedious one, but surely my patience was well rewarded.

I spent the month of October at Monte Carlo, just for another little flutter, and in order to get some nasty tastes out of my mouth. But bad luck dogged me once again, for I, alas! lost every sou at the tables—all except a couple of hundred.

I've often thought it curious that such little windfalls to a doctor do him so very little good.