or three times. But he began to
send me most extravagant presents. I suppose it was his Oriental way of
paying a compliment, but Dad objected."

"Of course he would. He knew his Orient and his Oriental. I assume, Miss
Abingdon, that you were in England during the years that your father
lived in the East?"

"Yes. I was at school. I have never been in the East."

Paul Harley hesitated. He found himself upon dangerously delicate ground
and was temporarily at a loss as to how to proceed. Unexpected aid came
from the taciturn Doctor McMurdoch.

"He never breathed a word of this to me, Phil," he said, gloomily. "The
impudence of the man! Small wonder Abingdon objected."

Phil Abingdon tilted her chin forward rebelliously.

"Ormuz Khan was merely unfamiliar with English customs," she retorted.
"There was nothing otherwise in his behaviour to which any one could
have taken exception."

"What's that!" demanded the physician. "If a man of colour paid his
heathen attentions to my daughter--"

"But you have no daughter, Doctor."

"No. But if I had--"

"If you had," echoed Phil Abingdon, and was about to carry on this wordy
warfare which, Harley divined, was of old standing between the two, when
sudden realization of the purpose of the visit came to her. She paused,
and he saw her biting her lips desperately. Almost at random he began to
speak again.

"So far as you are aware, then, Miss Abingdon, Sir Charles never met
Ormuz Khan?"

"He never even saw him, Mr. Harley, that I know of."

"It is most extraordinary that he should have given me the impression
that this man--for I can only suppose that he referred to Ormuz
Khan--was in some way associated with his fears."

"I must remind you, Mr. Harley," Doctor McMurdoch interrupted, "that
poor Abingdon was a free talker. His pride, I take it, which was
strong, had kept him silent on this matter with me, but he welcomed an
opportunity of easing his mind to one discreet and outside the family
circle. His words to you may have had no bearing upon the thing he
wished to consult you about."

"H'm," mused Harley. "That's possible. But such was not my impression."

He turned again to Phil Abingdon. "This Ormuz Khan, I understood you to
say, actually resides in or near London?"

"He is at present living at the Savoy, I believe. He also has a house
somewhere outside London."

There were a hundred other questions Paul Harley was anxious to ask:
some that were professional