Part 41

"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 when 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 mansion I can think of, that would just suit you is Miss Theresa O'Reilly's--a patient of mine--when she's any one's patient. Do you know anything about the ancient dame?"

Roger knew so much that he had waited for Lewis entirely for the reason that Miss Theresa O'Reilly was a patient of his.

"Isn't she related to your friend, Justin O'Reilly?" he inquired.

"She's a distant cousin. As for the house, Justin feels that it ought to be his. I have this from her, not from him. The old lady told me the other day that she heard Justin had been hoarding up his money to buy the house, and was coming to New York on purpose to talk matters over, but she would refuse to see him."

"A cranky old bird!" Sands sympathized.

"You're right. Last year she mentioned to several people, me among others, that she thought of offering the place for sale if she could get a good price, because the New York climate gave her rheumatism, and she'd like to try the French Riviera. But the minute she'd spoken to me--a friend of Justin's--she could have cut out her tongue. You see, Justin's great-great-grandfather built the house: an Irishman who came over before the Revolution, and fought with the Americans against the English. It remained in the family till a few years before Justin's birth, when his father was obliged to sell through poverty, and move out West. This old lady, Theresa O'Reilly, was the purchaser. She was, of course, a youngish woman then, though no chicken. The story is that she loved Justin's father, and tried to catch him with her money--she was a rich heiress. He was on the point of engaging himself when he fell desperately in love with a poor girl Theresa employed as social secretary, or something of the sort. Out of revenge, Theresa went to work in secret ways to ruin Justin Senior, who was a gay, careless fellow, without too much money to lose, or too much patience to make more. She's said to have put men up to lead him into bad investments. Anyhow, she got the house, and California got the man and his family. I imagine there was a hard struggle out there at first. Young Justin has had to carve his own fortune: his father and mother, and an older brother, died when he was a boy. All this long story came out of your wanting an old house. It can't have interested you much, I'm afraid!"

"Certainly, there's enough romance attached to that house!" said Roger, with a short laugh. "But Miss O'Reilly has changed her mind, and won't sell?"

"So she assures me," answered Lewis. "You see, she couldn't be sure Justin wasn't standing behind a dummy buyer, now she knows he's definitely after the place, and able to purchase for a decent price. I take it that in the circumstances she won't sell to any one. Perhaps she never meant to when the test came."