llness
as an excuse to bring O'Reilly into the flat, and the man had frightened
Beverley into giving him the pearls?

He was sipping his demi tasse, and had ceased to expect the man he
wanted, when that man walked into the room. Before he could sit down at
a neighbouring table Roger hailed him; a small, dark man of Jewish type,
a man of forty-five, perhaps, with the brilliant eyes of a scientist and
the arched brows of a dreamer.

"Hello, Doctor Lewis! I've been hoping you'd blow in!" Sands said
cordially. "Won't you dine with me?"

"But you've finished. I'd be keeping you."

"I want a talk with you, my dear chap," Roger assured him.

The doctor sat down at Sands' table.

"I'd have got here a long while ago," Doctor Lewis went on to explain,
"but just as I was leaving the Dietz, where I have a patient, I was
asked to stop and see--whom do you think?"

"Your friend, O'Reilly, perhaps. Someone mentioned to me that he was
there."

"No," said Lewis, "not O'Reilly, but as it happens, a friends of
O'Reilly's, in the same hotel, who suddenly collapsed."

"I can guess, then," replied Sands. "I know the Herons are at the Dietz.
Your patient was one of those two--Mrs. Heron, I should say. I don't
somehow see Heron 'collapsing.'"

"My patient was Heron, not his wife. The attack was nothing serious, but
Mrs. H---- was scared. You and Heron are as fast friends as ever, of
course?"

"I admire John Heron in many ways," Roger answered, indirectly.

"And he ought to admire you, as certainly he does! A good many people
thought you risked your life, throwing yourself into that business in
California, the way you did, Sands. But you came out on top, and brought
Heron out on top. Your reward was great!"

Roger smiled. He was thinking of the journey back, after his triumph,
and of Beverley. She had been his reward. Once it had seemed great.

"Have you seen Heron since he got to New York?" said the doctor.

"Not yet," said Sands.

"Well, he's hardly more than just arrived. Heron's a wiry chap. It needs
a good deal to knock him over. If it had happened last summer, or fall,
when the big row was on, there'd have been plenty of excuse, as Mrs.
Heron remarked. It appears the two had been quietly sitting together
down below, in the big hall, watching the crowd, and waiting for Justin
O'Reilly to go in with them to dinner. Mrs. H---- sent Heron back to
their bedrooms to find something she'd forgotten. She got scared at last
whe