While unconsciously playing into Follansbee’s hands, Floyd had opened the way for a diabolical crime.  
The head of St. Swithin’s had adroitly pulled the wool over James Stone’s eyes, and kept the half-crazed miner from knowing just what to expect; but nevertheless the specialist’s mind had been made up from the beginning. He had planned it all out after receiving the letter.
 
As for his recognition of the miner, which had so startled his visitor, it had been a very simple matter, and quite within the capacity of one much less shrewd than Stephen Follansbee. Floyd had announced that Stone and Crawford had taken passage on the Cortez. Follansbee had taken pains to learn when the vessel had docked, and when, later, the big, bronzed man had presented himself, the caller’s name had, to the doctor, been as good as written over his face.
 
That Stone was undoubtedly a victim of some mental derangement did not matter to Follansbee in the least. Almost any other physician would have been affected by the man’s plight, and would have thought of nothing but the best way to cure him. Not so Follansbee, however. His apology for a heart had been hard in the beginning, and it had grown steadily harder as a result of his ostensibly scientific, but really devilish, experiments on unfortunate sufferers.
 
Had there been a spark of honor in him, he would have done all in his power to keep the irresponsible Stone from crime, and, if possible, to banish his ailment; but instead he determined to use the demented man for his own ends to help him to murder, and finally to strip him of his fortune.
 
His conscience had not given him a single twinge, for the very good reason that he had none. In fact, the prospective divisions of wealth seemed to him eminently right and proper. He might be taking away Stone’s fortune, but he would be giving him Crawford’s in place of it. In other words, he reasoned that Stone would be getting the job done for practically nothing, and the four hundred and fifty thousand, while generous pay, was not a cent too much according to Follansbee’s view of it. He knew as well as any one could have known that, though he might try to shift the responsibility as much as he pleased, it lay with............