the two men; a queer proposition!

Bowman had taken a chair pretty well in the middle of the room. It was
Jim Edwards whose feet I had heard as he roamed about. No word was going
between them; apparently they hadn't spoken to each other at all; the
looks that met or avoided were those strange looks of persons who live
in lengthened and what might be termed intimate hostility.

"Ah--Boyne--isn't it?" Bowman greeted me; I thought our coming relieved
the situation. He shook hands, then turned to Barbara with, "Mrs.
Thornhill said you were here; I told her I would bring you back with
me."

I rather wondered not to hear him insist on being taken at once to the
study, but his next words gave the reason. He'd reached Santa Ysobel too
late for the inquest itself, but not too late to make what he informed
us was a thorough investigation of everything it treated of.

Barbara and I found places on the davenport; Edwards prowled up and down
the other end of the room, openly in torment. Those stormy black eyes of
his were seldom off Bowman, while the doctor's gray, heavy-lidded gaze
never got beyond the toes of the restless man's moving boots. He had
begun a grumbling tale of the coroner's incompetence and neglect to
reopen the inquest when he, the family physician, arrived, as though
that were important, when Worth came in.

Instantly the doctor was on his feet, had paced up to the new master of
the house, and began pumping his arm in a long handshake, while he
passed out those platitudes of condolence a man of his sort deals in at
such a time. The stuff I'd been reading in those diaries had told me
what was the root and branch of his friendship with the dead man; it
made the hair at the back of my neck lift to hear him boasting of it in
Jim Edwards' presence, and know what I knew. "And, my dear boy," he
finished, "they tell me you've not been to view the body--yet. I
thought perhaps you'd like to go--with me. I can have my machine here in
a minute. No?" as Worth declined with a wordless shake of the head.

I hoped he'd leave then; but he didn't. Instead, he turned back to his
chair, explaining,

"If Mrs. Thornhill's cook hadn't phoned me, when Mrs. Thornhill had a
second collapse last night, I suppose I should be in San Francisco
still. The coroner seemed to think there was no necessity for having
competent medical testimony as to the time of death, and the physical
condition of the deceased. I should have been wired for. T