As to Thorndyke, he has never to this day forgiven himself for having
allowed Fred Calverley to go home to his death.
VII
THE ALUMINIUM DAGGER
The "urgent call"--the instant, peremptory summons to professional
duty--is an experience that appertains to the medical rather than the
legal practitioner, and I had supposed, when I abandoned the clinical
side of my profession in favour of the forensic, that henceforth I
should know it no more; that the interrupted meal, the broken leisure,
and the jangle of the night-bell, were things of the past; but in
practice it was otherwise. The medical jurist is, so to speak, on the
borderland of the two professions, and exposed to the vicissitudes of
each calling, and so it happened from time to time that the professional
services of my colleague or myself were demanded at a moment's notice.
And thus it was in the case that I am about to relate.
The sacred rite of the "tub" had been duly performed, and the
freshly-dried person of the present narrator was about to be insinuated
into the first instalment of clothing, when a hurried step was heard
upon the stair, and the voice of our laboratory assistant, Polton, arose
at my colleague's door.
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