iate and I were just about to dine," he said. "You will wait
here until I have another place laid, and you can join us."

He departed, walking heavily down the hall, but almost at once Ford,
whose ears were alert for any sound, heard him returning, approaching
stealthily on tiptoe. If by this maneuver the Jew had hoped to discover
his patient in some indiscretion, he was unsuccessful, for he found Ford
standing just where he had left him, with his back turned to the
door, and gazing with apparent interest at a picture on the wall. The
significance of the incident was not lost upon the intruder. It taught
him he was still under surveillance, and that he must bear himself
warily. Murmuring some excuse for having returned, the Jew again
departed, and in a few minutes Ford heard his voice, and that of another
man, engaged in low tones in what was apparently an eager argument.

Only once was the voice of the other man raised sufficiently for Ford to
distinguish his words. "He is an American," protested the voice; "that
makes it worse."

Ford guessed that the speaker was Pearsall, and that against his
admittance to the house he was making earnest protest. A door, closing
with a bang, shut off the argument, but within a few minutes it was
evident the Jew had carried his point, for he reappeared to announce
that dinner was waiting. It was served in a room at the farther end of
the hall, and at the table, which was laid for three, Ford found a man
already seated. Prothero introduced him as "my associate," but from his
presence in the house, and from the fact that he was an American, Ford
knew that he was Pearsall.

Pearsall was a man of fifty. He was tall, spare, with closely shaven
face and gray hair, worn rather long. He spoke with the accent of
a Southerner, and although to Ford he was studiously polite, he was
obviously greatly ill at ease. He had the abrupt, inattentive manners,
the trembling fingers and quivering lips, of one who had long been
a slave to the drug habit, and who now, with difficulty, was holding
himself in hand.

Throughout the dinner, speaking to him as though, interested only as
his medical advisers, the Jew, and occasionally the American, sharply
examined and cross-examined their visitor. But they were unable to trip
him in his story, or to suggest that he was not just what he claimed to
be.

When the dinner was finished, the three men, for different reasons, were
each more at his ease. Both Pears