The Case of Lady Sannox

The relations between Douglas Stone and the
notorious Lady Sannox were very well known both among
the fashionable circles of which she was a brilliant
member, and the scientific bodies which numbered him
among their most illustrious confreres. There
was naturally, therefore, a very widespread interest
when it was announced one morning that the lady had
absolutely and for ever taken the veil, and that the
world would see her no more. When, at the very tail
of this rumour, there came the assurance that the
celebrated operating surgeon, the man of steel
nerves, had been found in the morning by his valet,
seated on one side of his bed, smiling pleasantly
upon the universe, with both legs jammed into one
side of his breeches and his great brain about as
valuable as a cap full of porridge, the matter was
strong enough to give quite a little thrill of
interest to folk who had never hoped that their jaded
nerves were capable of such a sensation.

Douglas Stone in his prime was one of the
most remarkable men in England. Indeed, he
could hardly be said to have ever reached his prime,
for he was but nine-and-thirty at the time of this
little incident. Those who knew him best were aware
that, famous as he was as a surgeon, he might have
succeeded with even greater rapidity in any of a
dozen lines of life. He could have cut his way to
fame as a soldier, struggled to it as an explorer,
bullied for it in the courts, or built it out of
stone and iron as an engineer. He was born to be
great, for he could plan what another man dare not
do, and he could do what another man dare not plan.
In surgery none could follow him. His nerve, his
judgment, his intuition, were things apart. Again
and again his knife cut away death, but grazed the
very springs of life in doing it, until his
assistants were as white as the patient. His energy,
his audacity, his full-blooded self-confidence--does
not the memory of them still linger to the south of
Marylebone Road and the north of Oxford Street?

His vices were as magnificent as his virtues, and
infinitely more picturesque. Large as was his
income, and it was the third largest of all
professional men in London, it was far beneath the
luxury of his living. Deep in his complex nature lay
a rich vein of sensualism, at the sport of which he
placed all the prizes of his life. The eye, the
ear, the touch, the palate--all were his masters.
The bouquet of old vintages, the scent of rare
exotics, the curves and tints of the daintiest
potteries of Europe--it was to these that the quick-
running stream of gold was transformed. And then
there came his sudden mad passion for Lady Sannox,
when a single interview with two