n time passed and neither Heron nor O'Reilly came down. She went to
see for herself what was up, and found her husband in a fainting fit.
She 'phoned just as I was leaving my other patient, and by the time I
arrived on the scene O'Reilly had floated in from the next-door suite.
He'd been out while the Herons thought he was dressing to dine with
them. All's well that ends well. Heron will be as brisk as ever in a day
or two."

"I'm glad to hear that," Roger said, gravely. "As you say, Heron's not a
man to be knocked over easily. Last year, when I was in California, he
came within an ace of being shot one night, and never turned a hair."

"His wife was asking him, when he came to, a lot of questions. Heron
wouldn't want to worry her, naturally. Didn't she have some great shock
last summer, or fall, while you were out West? A brother who was killed,
or killed himself?"

"A brother who died suddenly. There was no proof of violence. The young
man's death occurred the day I left, and not in California, but in New
Mexico--near the town of Albuquerque, at a house belonging to Mrs.
Heron. The Herons haven't been married many years," Roger went on. "Not
more than eight or ten. Mrs. Heron can't be much over thirty. I never
saw the brother. He was something of an invalid, and lived always at the
Albuquerque place. His handsome sister stayed with him sometimes. He was
a few years younger than she."

Sands had the air of giving these details somewhat grudgingly, as a
concession to the very evident curiosity of Lewis: but having satisfied
it as far as necessary, he turned the conversation to his own affairs:
the affairs, in fact, which had suggested to him this meeting with the
doctor.

"Whenever I have leisure just now I cut down to Newport to see how the
decorators get on with an alleged 'cottage' I've bought there for my
wife," he said. "It's been quite an amusement to me for the past few
weeks. I'm tired of living in an apartment, though ours isn't bad, as
flats go. I want a house, and I want an old one, or my wife does, with a
little romance of history attached to it. I'd like to get hold of one,
as a surprise for her. I know there aren't many in the market. I suppose
there's nothing good down in your neighbourhood?"

"Well, as you know, Gramercy Park and all round there has been pretty
thoroughly modernized," said Lewis, who lived in a big new house of
apartments, not far from Gramercy Park. "The only fine, old-fashioned