Was it Robert Burns who said that the best-laid plans of mice and men aft g**g agley? Or was it some other homespun poet with an inflated conceit of himself? I neither knew nor cared as I followed through the plans I had made. I had intended to serve Charles as I had served Swinton. I wished to destroy him, to humiliate him utterly and have him come crawling to me on his hands and knees to beg my forgiveness. He had dared to seduce my wife, my property, the woman I had gained with so much effort. I planned to destroy his professional reputation and impoverish him, so he lived with the most debased of society, or returned to his barren island to exist with the knowledge of his failure for the remainder of his whisky-sodden life. I would ask about his patients, take them from him and leave h
