The Adventures of Dick Maitland

Dick Maitland A Tale of Unknown Africa
By Harry Collingwood
CHAPTER ONE.
THE CATASTROPHE.
Doctor Julian Humphreys was spoken of by those who believed that
they knew him best as an eccentric; because, being a physician and
surgeon of quite unusual ability, he chose--possessing a small
independence amounting to a bare three hundred pounds per annum--to
establish himself in the East-End of London, and there devote himself
with zeal and enthusiasm to the amelioration of the sufferings of the
very poor, instead of capitalising his income and setting up in Harley
Street, where his exceptional qualifications would speedily and
inevitably have brought him a handsome fortune.
An income of three hundred pounds per annum--out of which one has
to feed, clothe, and house oneself--does not afford very much scope for
the practice of philanthropy, as Dr Humphreys very well knew; his
establishment, therefore, was of very modest dimensions, consisting
merely of three rooms with the usual domestic offices, one room--the
front and largest one--being fitted up as surgery, dispensary, and
consulting room, while, of the other two, one served as a sleeping
apartment for himself and his pupil, Mr Richard Maitland, the third
being sacred to Polly Nevis, a sturdy and willing, but somewhat untidy
person, who discharged the united functions of parlour maid,
housemaid, chamber maid, cook, and scullery maid to the
establishment.
The large red lamp which shone over Dr Humphreys' door at night was
the one and only picturesque feature of Paradise Street--surely so
named by an individual of singularly caustic and sardonic humour, for
anything less suggestive of the delights of Paradise than the squalid and

malodorous street so named it would indeed be difficult to
conceive--and in the course of the four years during which it had been
in position that lamp had become a familiar object to every man,
woman, and child within a radius of at least a mile; for the Doctor's
fame had soon spread, and his clientele comprised practically
everybody within that radius.
The apparently insignificant event that initiated the extraordinary series
of adventures, of which this is the narrative, occurred about the hour of
8 a.m. on a certain day of September in the year of our Lord 19--; and it
consisted in the delivery by the postman of a letter addressed to Mr
Richard Maitland, care of Dr J. Humphreys, 19 Paradise Street,
Whitechapel, E. The letter was addressed in the well- known
handwriting of Dick's mother; but the recipient did not immediately
open it, for he was at the moment engaged in assisting the Doctor to
dress and bind up the wounds of Mrs William Taylor, whose husband,
having returned home furiously drunk upon the closing of the public
houses on the previous night, had proceeded to vent his spleen upon his
long-suffering wife, because, having no money and nothing that she
could pawn, she had failed to have a hot supper ready for him upon his
arrival.
When, however, Mrs Taylor, scarcely recognisable because of the
voluminous bandages that swathed her head and face, and carrying with
her a powerful odour of iodoform, was bowed out of the surgery by Dr
Humphreys, with a reminder--in reply to a murmur that she had no
money just then--that she was one of his free patients, and a message
from the Doctor to Mr William Taylor, which the poor woman had not
the remotest intention to deliver, Dick drew his mother's letter from his
pocket and opened it. As he mastered its contents he went white to the
lips, as well he might; for this is what he read:
The Cedars, 14 South Hill, Sydenham. September 10th, 19--.
"My dear Dick,--
"I am sorry to be obliged to call you away from your work, but I must
ask you to please come home to me as soon as you can possibly get

away, for I have just received news of so disastrous a character that I
dare not put it upon paper. Besides, I am so distracted that I scarcely
know what I am writing, as you will no doubt understand when I tell
you that we are ruined--absolutely and irretrievably ruined! Come as
soon as you can, my dear, for I feel as though I shall go out of my
senses if I cannot soon have someone to counsel me as to what is the
best thing to be done under these dreadful circumstances.
"Your loving but distracted mother,--
"Edith Maitland."
"Hillo, Dick! what's the matter?" exclaimed the Doctor, catching a
glimpse of his assistant's drawn face and pallid lips as Maitland stared
incredulously at the letter in his hand. "Nothing wrong, I hope. You
look as though you had just seen a ghost!"
"So I have; the ghosts of--many things," answered Dick. "Unless this
letter is--but no, it is the