play. I wish he said it in a play which did anything like common justice to our profession, by-the-bye. There is an apothecary in that drama, sir, which is a low thing; vulgar, sir; out of nature altogether."
Mr. Jobling pulled out his shirt-frill of fine linen, as though he would have added, "This is what I call nature in a medical man, sir;" and looked at Jonas for an observation.
Jonas not being in a condition to pursue the subject, took up a case of lancets that was lying on the table, and opened it.
"Ah!" said the doctor, leaning back in his chair, "I always take 'em out of my pocket before I eat. My pockets are rather tight. Ha, ha, ha!"
Jonas had opened one of the shining little instruments; and was scrutinising it with a look as sharp and eager as its own bright edge.
"Good steel, doctor. Good steel! Eh?"
"Ye-es," replied the doctor, with the faltering modesty of ownership. "One might open a vein pretty dexterously with that, Mr. Chuzzlewit."
"It has opened a good many in its time, I suppose?" said Jonas, looking at it with a growing interest.
"Not a few, my dear sir, not a few. It has been engaged in a—in a pretty good practice, I believe I may say," replied the doctor, coughing as if the matter-of-fact were so very dry and literal that he couldn't help it. "In a pretty good practice," repeated the doctor, putting another glass of wine to his lips.
"Now, could you cut a man's throat with such a thing as this?" demanded Jonas.
"Oh certainly, certainly, if you took him in the right place," returned the doctor. "It all depends upon that."
"Where you have your hand now, hey?" cried Jonas, bending forward to look at it.
"Yes," said the doctor; "that's the jugular."
Jonas, in his vivacity, made a sudden sawing in the air, so close behind the doctor's jugular, that he turned quite red. Then Jonas (in the same strange spirit of vivacity) burst into a loud discordant laugh.
"No, no," said the doctor, shaking his head: "edge tools, edge tools; never play with 'em. A very remarkable instance of the skilful use of edge-tools, by the way, occurs to me at this moment. It was a case of murder. I am afraid it was a case of murder, committed by a member of our profession; it was so artistically done."
"Aye!" said Jonas. "How was that?"
"Why, sir," returned Jobling, "the thing lies in a nut-shell. A certain gentleman was found, one morning, in an obscure street, standing upright in an angle of a doorway—I should rather say, leaning, in an upright position, in the angle of a doorway, and supported consequently by the doorway. Upon his waistcoat there was one solitary drop of blood. He was dead, and cold; and had been murdered, sir."
"Only one drop of blood!" said Jonas.
"Sir, that man," replied the doctor, "had been stabbed to the heart. Had been stabbed to the heart with such dexterity, sir, that he had died instantly, and had bled internally. It was supposed that a medical friend of his (to whom suspicion attached) had engaged him in
