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"I examined the Admiral in consultation with my colleague, and I confirmed his diagnosis. But, to my surprise, Yorke-Bannerman showed the most invincible and reprehensible objection to experiment upon his relative. In vain I assured him that he must place his duty to science high above all other considerations.

I felt certain by this time that Hilda Wade and Maisie Yorke-Bannerman were one and the same person. To be sure, it gave me a twinge to think that Hilda should be masquerading under an assumed name; but I waived that question for the moment, and awaited her explanations. The great point now was to find Hilda. She was flying from Sebastian to mature a new plan. But whither?

Well, one day the Admiral was taken ill, at his own house, and Yorke-Bannerman attended him.

Admiring his greatness still, I had doubts as to his goodness. That day I felt I positively mistrusted him. I wondered what his passage of arms with Hilda might mean. Yet, somehow, I was shy of alluding to it before her. One thing, however, was clear to me now this great campaign that was being waged between the nurse and the Professor had reference to the case of Dr. Yorke-Bannerman.

"The circumstances which led up to the death of Admiral Scott Prideaux, and the suspicions which caused the arrest of Doctor Yorke-Bannerman, have never yet been fully explained, although they were by no means so profound that they might not have been unravelled at the time had a man of intellect concentrated his attention upon them.

"I have merely my suspicions. I am in love with a girl, and something about her makes me think she is probably a Yorke-Bannerman." "But, my dear Hubert, if that is so," the great lawyer went on, waving me off with one fat hand, "it must be at once apparent to you that I am the last person on earth to whom you ought to apply for information. Remember my oath.

He smiled this time till I thought his smile would swallow him. "If Yorke-Bannerman had NOT been my client," he mused aloud, "I might have been inclined to suspect rather that Sebastian aided him to avoid justice by giving him something violent to take, if he wished it: something which might accelerate the inevitable action of the heart-disease from which he was suffering. Isn't THAT more likely?"

"Unfortunately, yes; he made use of aconitine for that otherwise laudable purpose. Now, as ill luck would have it" Mayfield's wrinkles deepened "Yorke-Bannerman and Sebastian, then two rising doctors engaged in physiological researches together, had just been occupied in experimenting upon this very drug testing the use of aconitine.

The police contention was that Yorke-Bannerman somehow managed to put the stuff into the milk beforehand; my own theory was as counsel for the accused" he blinked his fat eyes "that old Prideaux had concealed a large quantity of aconitine in the bed, before his illness, and went on taking it from time to time just to spite his nephew." "And you BELIEVE that, Mr. Mayfield?"

Was Hilda Wade, or was she not, the daughter of the supposed murderer, Dr. Yorke-Bannerman? I looked up as much of the case as I could, in unobtrusive ways, among the old law-reports, and found that the barrister who had had charge of the defence was my father's old friend, Mr. Horace Mayfield, a man of elegant tastes, and the means to gratify them.