Mrs. Haythorne," Messner smiled and bowed.

She flashed a look at him that was more anger than appeal.

Haythorne was about to ask the other's name. His mouth had opened to
form the question when Messner cut him off.

"Come to think of it, Doctor, you may possibly be able to satisfy my
curiosity. There was a sort of scandal in faculty circles some two or
three years ago. The wife of one of the English professors--er, if you
will pardon me, Mrs. Haythorne--disappeared with some San Francisco
doctor, I understood, though his name does not just now come to my lips.
Do you remember the incident?"

Haythorne nodded his head. "Made quite a stir at the time. His name was
Womble--Graham Womble. He had a magnificent practice. I knew him
somewhat."

"Well, what I was trying to get at was what had become of them. I was
wondering if you had heard. They left no trace, hide nor hair."

"He covered his tracks cunningly." Haythorne cleared his throat. "There
was rumor that they went to the South Seas--were lost on a trading
schooner in a typhoon, or something like that."

"I never heard that," Messner said. "You remember the case, Mrs.
Haythorne?"

"Perfectly," she answered, in a voice the control of which was in amazing
contrast to the anger that blazed in the face she turned aside so that
Haythorne might not see.

The latter was again on the verge of asking his name, when Messner
remarked:

"This Dr. Womble, I've heard he was very handsome, and--er--quite a
success, so to say, with the ladies."

"Well, if he was, he finished himself off by that affair," Haythorne
grumbled.

"And the woman was a termagant--at least so I've been told. It was
generally accepted in Berkeley that she made life--er--not exactly
paradise for her husband."

"I never heard that," Haythorne rejoined. "In San Francisco the talk was
all the other way."

"Woman sort of a martyr, eh?--crucified on the cross of matrimony?"

The doctor nodded. Messner's gray eyes were mildly curious as he went
on:

"That was to be expected--two sides to the shield. Living in Berkeley I
only got the one side. She was a great deal in San Francisco, it seems."

"Some coffee, please," Haythorne said.

The woman refilled his mug, at the same time breaking into light
laughter.

"You're gossiping like a pair of beldames," she chided them.

"It's so interesting," Messner smiled at her, then returned to the
doctor. "The husband seems then to have