The Mystery of Angelina Frood

It takes a good deal to surprise a really seasoned medical practitioner,
and still more to arouse in him an abiding curiosity. But at the time
when I took charge of Dr. Humphrey's practice in Osnaburgh-street,
Regent's Park, I was far from being a seasoned practitioner, having, in
fact, been qualified little more than a year, in which short period I
had not yet developed the professional immunity from either of the above
mental states. Hence the singular experience which I am about to relate
not only made a deep impression on me at the time, but remained with me
for long after as a matter of curious speculation.

It was close upon midnight, indeed an adjacent church clock had already
struck the third quarter, when I laid aside my book and yawned
profoundly, without prejudice to the author who had kept me so long from
my bed. Then I rose and stretched myself, and was in the act of knocking
the long-extinct ashes out of my pipe when the bell rang. As the
servants had gone to bed, I went out to the door, congratulating myself
on having stayed up beyond my usual bedtime, but wishing the visitor at
the devil all the same. The opening of the door gave me a view of a wet
street with a drizzle of rain falling, a large closed car by the kerb,
and a tallish man on the doorstep, apparently about to renew his attack
on the bell.

"Dr. Pumphrey?" he asked; and by that token I gathered that he was a
stranger.

"No," I answered; "he is out of town, but I am looking after his
practice."

"Very well," he said, somewhat brusquely. "I want you to come and see a
lady who has been suddenly taken ill. She has had a rather severe
shock."

"Do you mean a mental or a physical shock?" I asked.

"Well, I should say mental," he replied, but so inconclusively that I
pressed him for more definite particulars.

"Has she sustained any injuries?" I inquired.

"No," he answered, but still indecisively. "No; that is, so far as I
know. I think not."

"No wound, for instance?"