Karl Andinnian was tempted bitterly to ask of his own heart whether he could have fallen under the displeasure of Heaven, so persistently did every fresh movement of his, intended for good, turn into an increased bank of danger. Poor Sir Adam had more need to question it than he; for nothing but ill-omened chances seemed to pursue him.

It is quite probable that when Ann Hopley and her flurried mistress decided to telegraph for Dr. Cavendish of Basham, they had thought, and hoped, that the doctor would come back by train, pass quietly on foot into the Maze, so pass out again, and the public be none the wiser. Dr. Cavendish, however, who was out when the telegram arrived, drove over later in his gig; and the gig, with the groom in it, paced before the Maze gate while the doctor was inside, engaged with his patient.

Just then there occurred one of those unhappy chances. Mr. Moore, the surgeon, happened to walk by with his daughter, Jemima, and saw the gig--which he knew well--waiting about. It took him by surprise, as he had not heard that anyone was ill in the vicinity. The groom touched his hat, and Mr. Moore went up to him.

"Waiting for your master, James? Who is he with? Who is ill?"

"It\'s somebody down yonder, sir," replied the man, pointing back over his shoulder to indicate the Maze; but which action was not intelligible to the surgeon.

"Down where? At the Court?"

"No, sir. At the Maze."

"At the Maze! Why, who can be ill there?\'" cried Mr. Moore.

"I don\'t know, sir. Master had a telegram, telling him to come."

At that moment Dr. Cavendish was seen to leave the gate and come towards his gig. Mr. Moore walked quickly forward to meet him, and the gig turned.

"I suppose you have been called to Mrs. Grey, doctor," observed the surgeon, as he shook hands. "Has she had a relapse? I wonder she did not send for me. I have but just given up attending her."

"Mrs. Grey!" returned the Doctor. "Oh, no. It is a gentleman I have been called to see."

"What gentleman?" asked the surgeon in surprise. "There\'s no gentleman at the Maze."

"One is there now. I don\'t know who it is. Some friend or relative of the lady\'s, probably. Ah, Miss Jemima! blooming as ever, I perceive," he broke off, as the young lady came slowly up. "Could you not give some of us pale, over-worked people a receipt for those roses on your cheeks?"

"What is it that\'s the matter with him?" interposed the surgeon, leaving his daughter to burst into her giggle.

Dr. Cavendish put his arm within his friend\'s, led him beyond the hearing of Miss Jemima, and said a few words in a low tone.

"Why, the case must be a grave one!" exclaimed Mr. Moore aloud.

"I think so. I don\'t like the symptoms at all. From some cause or other, too, it seems he has not had advice till now, which makes it all the more dangerous."

"By the way, doctor, as you are here, I wish you would spare five minutes to see a poor woman with me," said Mr. Moore, passing from the other subject. "It won\'t hinder you much longer than that."

"All right, Moore. Who is it?"

"It\'s the widow of that poor fellow who died from sun-stroke in the summer, Whittle. The woman has been ailing ever since, and very grave disease has now set in. I don\'t believe I shall save her; only yesterday it crossed my mind to wish you could see her. She lives just down below there; in one of the cottages beyond Foxwood Court."

They got into the gig, the physician taking the reins, and telling his groom to follow on foot. Miss Jemima was left to make her own way home. She was rather a pretty girl, with a high colour, and a quantity of light brown curls, and her manners were straightforward and decisive. When the follies and vanities of youth should have been chased away by sound experience, allowing her naturally good sense to come to the surface, she would, in all probability, be as strong-minded as her Aunt Diana, whom she already resembled in many ways.

The autumn evening was drawing on: twilight had set in. Miss Jemima stood a moment, deliberating which road she should take; whether follow the gig, and go home round by the Court, or the other way. Of the two, the latter was the nearer, and the least lonely; and she might--yes, she might--encounter Mr. Cattacomb on his way to or from St. Jerome\'s. Clearly it was the one to choose. Turning briskly round when the decision was made, she nearly ran against Mr. Strange. That gentleman had just got back from London, sent down again by the authorities at Scotland Yard, and was on his way from the station. The Maze had become an object, of so much interest to him as to induce him to choose the long way round that would cause him to pass its gates, rather than take the direct road to the village. And here was another of those unfortunate accidents apparently springing out of chance; for the detective had seen the gig waiting, and halted in a bend of the hedge to watch the colloquy of the doctors.

"Good gracious, is it you, Mr. Strange?" cried the young lady, beginning to giggle again. "Why, Mother Jinks declared this afternoon you had gone out for the day!"

"Did she? Well, when I stroll out I never know when I may get back: the country is more tempting in autumn than at any other season. That was a doctor\'s gig, was it not, Miss Jemima?"

"Dr. Cavendish\'s of Basham," replied Miss Jemima, who enjoyed the honour of a tolerable intimacy with Mrs. Jinks\'s lodger--as did most of the other young ladies frequenting the parson\'s rooms.

"He must have come over to see some one. I wonder who is ill?"

"Papa wondered, too, when he first saw the gig. It is somebody at the Maze."

"Do you know who?"

"Well, they seemed to talk as if it were a gentleman. I did not much notice."

"A gentleman?"

"I think so. I am sure they said \'he\' and \'him.\' Perhaps Mrs. Grey\'s husband has arrived. Whoever it is he must be very ill, for I heard papa say the case must be \'grave,\' and the doctor called it \'dangerous.\' They have gone on together now to see poor Hannah Whittle."

Not since he had had the affair in hand had the detective\'s ears been regaled with so palatable a dish. That Philip Salter had been taken ill with some malady or another sufficiently serious to necessitate the summoning of a doctor, he fully believed. Miss Jemima resumed.

"I must say, considering that papa is the medical attendant there, Mrs. Grey might have had the good manners to consult him first."

"It may be the old gardener that\'s ill," observed the detective slowly, who had been turning his thoughts about.

"So it may," acquiesced Miss Jemima. "He\'s but a poor, creaky old thing by all accounts. But no--they would hardly go to the expense of telegraphing for a physician for him with papa at hand."

"Oh, they telegraphed, did they?"

"So the groom said."

"The girl is right," thought the detective. "They\'d not telegraph for Hopley. It is Salter. And they have called in a stranger from a distance in preference to Mr. Moore close by. The latter might have talked to the neighbourhood. You have done me a wonderful service, young lady, if you did but know it."

Mr. Strange did not offer to attend her home, but suffered her to depart alone.

Miss Jemima, who was rather fond of a little general flirtation, though she did perhaps favour one swain above all others, resented the slight in her heart. She consoled herself after the manner of the fox when he could not reach the grapes.

"He\'s nothing but a bear," said she, tossing her little vain head as she tripped away in the deepening gloom of the evening. "It is all for the best. We might have chanced to meet Mr. Cattacomb, and then he would have looked daggers at me. Or--my goodness me!--perhaps Aunt Diana."

Mr. Strange strolled on, revolving the aspect of affairs in his official mind. His next object must be to get to speak to Dr. Cavendish and learn who it really was that he had been to see. Of course it was not absolutely beyond the cards of possibility that the sick man was Hopley. It was not impossible that Mrs. Grey might have some private and personal objection to the calling in again of Mr. Moore; or that the old man had been seized with some illness so alarming as to necessitate the services of a clever physician in preference to those of a general practitioner. He did not think any of this likely, but it might be; and only Dr. Cavendish could set it at rest.

Perhaps some slight hope animated him that he might obtain an immediate interview with Dr. Cavendish on the spot, as he returned from Mrs. Whittle\'s cottage. If so, he found it defeated. The gig came back with the two gentlemen in it, and it drove off direct to the village, not passing Foxwood Court at all, or the detective; but the latter was near enough to see it travel along. Mr. Moore was dropped at his own house, and the groom--who had been sent on there--taken up; and then the gig went on to Basham.

"I must see him somehow," decided the detective--"and the less time lost over it, the better. Of course a man in the dangerously sick state this one is represented to be, cannot make himself scarce as quickly as one in health could; but Salter has not played at hide-and-seek so long to expose himself unnecessarily. He would make superhuman efforts to elude us, and rather get away dying than wait to be taken. Better strike while the iron is hot. I must see the doctor to-night."

He turned back to the station; and was just in time to watch the train for Basham go puffing out.

"That train has gone on before its time!" he cried in anger.

After reference to clocks and watches, it was found that it had gone on before its time by more than a minute. The station-master apologised: said the train was up three or four minutes too early; and, as no passengers were waiting to go on by it, he had given the signal to start rather too soon. Mr. Strange gave the master in return a bit of his mind; but he could not recall the train, and had to wait for the next.

The consequence of this was, that he did not reach Basham until past nine o\'clock. Enquiring for the residence of Dr. Cavendish, he was directed to a substantial-looking house near the market-place. A boy in buttons, who came to the door, said the Doctor was not at home.

"I particularly wish to see him," said Mr. Strange. "Will he be long?"

"Well, I don\'t know," replied the boy, indifferently; who, like the rest of his tribe, had no objection to indulge in semi-insolence when it might be done with safety. "Master don\'t never hardly see patients at this hour, None of \'em cares to come at night-time."

"I am not a patient. My business with Dr. Cavendish is private and urgent. I will wait until he comes in."

The boy, not daring to make objection to this, ushered the visitor into a small room that he called the study. It had one gaslight burning; just enough to illumine the book-shelves and a white bust or two that stood in the corners on pedestals. Here Mr. Strange was left to his reflections.

He had plenty of food for them. That Salter was at the Maze, he felt as sure of as though he............