But the contrasts of which I have spoken were most singular and puzzling.  There were the bookshelves, for instance, home-made and stained at the cost of a few pence, but filled with recent and costly works on archaeology and ancient art.  There were the objects on the mantelpiece:  a facsimile in bronze—­not bronzed plaster—­of the beautiful head of Hypnos and a pair of fine Ushabti figures.  There were the decorations of the walls, a number of etchings—­signed proofs, every one of them—­of Oriental subjects, and a splendid facsimile reproduction of an Egyptian papyrus.  It was incongruous in the extreme, this mingling of costly refinements with the barest and shabbiest necessaries of life, of fastidious culture with manifest poverty.  I could make nothing of it.  What manner of man, I wondered, was this new patient of mine?  Was he a miser, hiding himself and his wealth in this obscure court?  An eccentric savant?  A philosopher?  Or—­more probably—­a crank?  But at this point my meditations were interrupted by the voice from the adjoining room, once more raised in anger.

“But I say that you are making an accusation!  You are implying that I made away with him.”

“Not at all,” was the reply; “but I repeat that it is your business to ascertain what has become of him.  The responsibility rests upon you.”

“Upon me!” rejoined the first voice.  “And what about you?  Your position is a pretty fishy one if it comes to that.”

“What!” roared the other.  “Do you insinuate that I murdered my own brother?”

During this amazing colloquy I had stood gaping with sheer astonishment.  Suddenly I recollected myself, and, dropping into a chair, set my elbows on my knees and slapped my hands over my ears; and thus I must have remained for a full minute when I became aware of the closing of a door behind me.

I sprang to my feet and turned in some embarrassment (for I must have looked unspeakably ridiculous) to confront the sombre figure of a rather tall and strikingly handsome girl, who, as she stood with her hand on the knob of the door, saluted me with a formal bow.  In an instantaneous glance I noted how perfectly she matched her strange surroundings.  Black-robed, black-haired, with black-grey eyes and a grave, sad face of ivory pallor, she stood, like one of old Terborch’s portraits, a harmony in tones so low as to be but a step removed from monochrome.  Obviously a lady in spite of the worn and rusty dress, and something in the poise of the head and the set of the straight brows hinted at a spirit that adversity had hardened rather than broken.

“I must ask you to forgive me for keeping you waiting,” she said; and as she spoke a certain softening at the corners of the austere mouth reminded me of the absurd position in which she had found me.

I murmured that the trifling delay was of no consequence whatever; that I had, in fact, been rather glad of the rest; and I was beginning somewhat vaguely to approach the subject of the invalid when the voice from the adjoining room again broke forth with hideous distinctness.