In these cases there is always room for doubt;
and a man would rather doubt his own perceptions than believe the hellish
truth. It is by this natural hesitation so many lives are lost. While the
doctor deliberates, the patient dies. And then, if the secret of the
death transpires--by circumstantial evidence, perhaps, which never came
to the doctor's knowledge,--there is a public outcry. The doctor's
practice is ruined, and his heart broken. The outcry would have been
still louder if he had told the truth in time to save the patient, and
had not been able to prove his words. You think me a coward and a
scoundrel because I dared not utter my suspicion when I saw Mr. Halliday
dying. While it was only a suspicion it would have been certain ruin for
me to give utterance to it. The day came when it was almost a conviction.
I went back to that man Sheldon's house, determined to insist upon the
calling in of a physician who would have made that conviction certainty.
My resolution came too late. It is possible that Sheldon had perceived my
suspicions, and had hastened matters. My patient was dead before I
reached the house."
"How am I to save her?" repeated Valentine, with the same helpless
manner. He could not bring himself to consider Tom Halliday's death. The
subject was too far away from him--remote as the dim shadows of departed
centuries. In all the universe there were but two figures standing out in
lurid brightness against the dense night of chaos--a helpless girl held
in the clutches of a secret assassin; and it was his work to rescue her.
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