"Too bad you washed her hair; there may have been something suggestive. .. Necessary, I suppose... Hm. Here, what's this? Now what do you make of that, Watson?" Holmes lifted a lock of the lady's hair to point out a small patch about the size of a farthing just above her right occipital area. "Shaved, I believe. Note that small circular scab in the center. Wait, here's another. Identical," he continued, lifting hair above the left occipital.

"It looks like the mark of a hypodermic needle," I volunteered.

Holmes raised an eyebrow. "A most peculiar place for an injection, is it not?"

"Perhaps it was intradermal," I suggested.

Dr. Stanley examined it also. "I didn't spot these yesterday." He looked faintly nonplused. "I've never seen anything like it."

Holmes reexamined the spots closely with his pocket lens. I could tell from the grim set of his features that some uncommonly unpleasant idea had occurred to him.

"I say, Watson," he said, walking over to the window and lowering his voice, by which I understood he wanted a private word with me. I joined him, gazing down into a little courtyard formed by the labyrinthine angles of

the old buildings. "I have an odd notion with regard to those spots, but I don't know if it's medically possible." He stared unseeingly down into the little gulf of air. "Suppose that for some reason, let us say to gain control of some property, someone wished to simulate an incapacitating stroke in a second party. Consider for a moment, Watson, how a frog is prepared for dissection."

"Holmes, what a horrible idea!" I cried, as I caught the drift of his thinking.

A little gesture of his hand warned me to keep my voice down. "The insertion of a needle, a little twist," his index finger twirled suggestively by way of demonstration, "and it would be done. It would leave practically no mark after the tiny spot had had a few days to heal. No trace at all once the scab dropped off and the hair grew back. But-is it possible?"