the reverse."

"Well, you may be right," said Gordon, "and yet you have to consider
that this is a man in full vigor," he added, "that presumably he has
considerable reserve strength upon which to draw. Still if you prefer
the other treatment--"

"I have seen very good results from it," said James. He was becoming
more and more astonished at the older man's helpless, almost appealing,
manner toward himself. "What is the man's name?" he asked.

"I don't know what name he has given here," Gordon replied evasively. "I
will tell you later on what his name is."

Suddenly the parlor door was flung open, and a woman appeared. She was
middle-aged, very large, clad in black raiment, which had an effect of
sliding and slipping from her when she moved. She kept clutching at the
buttons of her coat, which did not quite meet over her full front. She
brought together the ends of a black fur boa, she reached constantly for
the back of her skirts, and gave them a firm tug which relaxed the next
moment. Her decent black bonnet was askew, her large face was flushed.
She had been a strapping, handsome country girl once; now she was almost
indecent in her involuntary exuberance of coarse femininity.

"How do you do, Mrs. Slocum?" Doctor Gordon said politely.

James rose, Gordon introduced him. Mrs. Slocum did not bow, she jerked
her great chin upward, then she spoke with really alarming ferocity.
"Where has my boarder went? That's what I want to know. That's what I
have come here for, not for no bowin's and scrapin's. Where has my
boarder went?"

A keen look came into Gordon's face. "I don't know who your boarder is,
Mrs. Slocum," he said.

CHAPTER X

Mrs. Slocum looked at the doctor with a wide gape of surprise.

"Thought you knew," said she. "His name is Meserve, Mr. Edward Meserve,
and if he has come and went, and not told where, he was good pay, and if
he was took sick whilst he was to my house, I could have asked twice as
much as I did before. I'd like to know what right you had to take my
boarder to the hotel. He was my boarder. He wan't your boarder. I want
him fetched right back. That's what I have came for."

"Mrs. Slocum," said Gordon in a hard voice, "Mr. Meserve is too sick to
be moved, and his disease may be contagious. You might lose all your
other boarders, and whether he recovers or not, you would be obliged to
fumigate your house, and have his room repapered and plastered."

"He's got money enough to