On returning to the waiting-room, he addressed a characteristic question to the assembled visitors. "_More_ humbug?" asked the gentleman who liked to talk to a pretty woman.
The servant--completely puzzled by his own stupidity--attempted to make his apologies.
"Pray forgive me, gentlemen," he said. "I am afraid I have confused the cards I distribute with the cards returned to me. Ithink I had better consult my master."
Left by themselves, the visitors began to speak jestingly of the strange situation in which they were placed. The original holder of Number Fourteen described his experience of the Doctor in his own pithy way. "I applied to the fellow to tell my fortune. He first went to sleep over it, and then he said he could tell me nothing. I asked why. 'I don't know,' says he. '_ I_ do,' says I--'humbug!' I'll bet you the long odds, gentlemen, that _you_find it humbug, too."
Before the wager could be accepted or declined, the door of the inner room was opened again. The tall, spare, black figure of a new personage appeared on the threshold, relieved darkly against the light in the room behind him. He addressed the visitors in these words:
