The Forger

THE BIG consulting–room at 903, Harley Street differed as much from its kind as Mr. Cheyne Wells differed from the average consultant.It was something between a drawing–room and the kind of a library which a lover of good books gathers together piecemeal as opportunity presents. There was comfort in the worn, but not too worn, furniture, in the deep, leather–covered settee drawn up before the red fire. Two walls were filled with shelves wedged with oddly bound, oddly sized volumes; there were books on the table, a newspaper dropped by a careless hand on the floor, but nothing of the apparatus of medicine—not so much as a microscope or test tube.In one corner of the room, near the window where yellow sunlight was pouring in, was a polished door; beyond that a white–tiled bathroom without a bath but with many glass shelves and glass–topped table. You could have your fill of queer mechanisms there, and your nostrils offended by pungent antiseptics. There were cupboards, carefully locked, with rows and rows of bottles, and steel and glass cabinets full of little culture dishes. But though Peter Clifton had been a constant visitor for years, he had never seen that door opened.