en machine was slowly convincing Paris and New York of its
magnificent possibilities. Saxham used a smart, well-horsed, hired
brougham for day-visits, and for night work a motor-tricycle. There were
no stables to the house in Chilworth Street. He left the motor-tricycle at
the place where he had bought it second-hand. The machine was cleaned and
kept in order, and brought to his door by one of the employes at a certain
hour, for a fixed weekly sum paid to the proprietor of the establishment,
Bough by name, an Englishman born in the Transvaal, who had quite
recently, or so he gave out, emigrated from South Africa, and set up in
London as a cycle-seller and repairer, though there were not many cycles
at the shop. Heavy packing-cases and crates were always being delivered
there, and always being despatched from thence, via Cape Town and Port
Elizabeth and Delagoa Bay to the Transvaal, Bough being agent, or so he
said, for several South African firms engaged in the transport of
agricultural machines. Bough had a wife, a large-eyed, delicate-looking,
pretty little woman, who seemed afraid of the big, muscular, tanned fellow
of thirty-eight or so, with the odd light eyes, and the smooth manner, and
the ready smile, and the short, expert, hairy, cruel-looking hands. He had
seen life, had Bough, at the goldfields and at the diamond-mines, and as a
trooper through the Zulu and Matabele campaigns, and he was ready to talk
about what he had seen. Still there were reservations about Bough, and
mysteries. The Doctor suspected him of being brutal to his wife, and would
not have been surprised any morning upon receiving the news of the man's
arrest as one of a gang of forgers, or coiners, or burglars. But he lived
and let live, and whatever else the big Afrikander may have been, he was
an excellent workman at his trade.

One evening Bough rode round on the motor-tricycle himself, and mentioned
casually that his wife was ailing. The Doctor, in the act of mounting the
machine, put a brief question or two, registered the replies in the
automatic sub-memory he kept for business, and told the man to send her
round at ten o'clock upon the following morning.

She came, punctual to the hour, and was shown into Owen's
consulting-room--a little woman with beautiful, melancholy eyes and a
pretty figure. Illiterate, common, affected, and vain to a degree,
hideously misusing the English language in that low, dulcet voice of hers,
ludicrous in her