ve been born, or died, or got married, always had a look of having
got in by accident, or under some false pretence? Have we not felt
inflated when a relation of ours has had a letter to a newspaper
inserted, in real print, with his own name as bold as brass? Vereker
was not surprised, on thinking it over, that he personally had missed
the clue. And if he, why not others? Besides, all the Harrisson talk
had been superseded by some more exciting matter before it had been
recognised as possible that Fenwick's memory might never come back.

Just as he arrived at Mrs. Iggulden's a thought struck him--not
heavily; only a light, reminding flick--and he stopped a minute to
see what it had to say. It referred to his interview with Scotland
Yard, some six weeks after Fenwick's first appearance.

He could recall that in the course of his interview one of the
younger officials spoke in an undertone to his chief; who thereon,
after consideration, turned to the doctor and said, "Had not your
man a panama hat? I understood you to say so;" and on receiving an
affirmative reply, spoke again in an undertone to his subordinate
to the effect, half-caught by Vereker, that "Alison's hat was black
felt." Did he say by any chance Harrisson, not Alison? If so, might
not that account for a rather forbidding or opposive attitude on the
Yard's part? He remembered something of fictitious claimants coming
forward, representing themselves as Harrisson--desperate bidders for
a chance of the Klondyke gold. They might easily have supposed this
man and his quenched memory another of the same sort. Evidently if
investigation was not to suffer from overgrown suspicion, only young
and guileless official instinct could be trusted--plain-clothes
_ingenus_. Dr. Conrad laughed to himself over a particularly
outrageous escapade of Sally's, who, when her mother said they always
sent such very young chicks of constables to Glenmoira Road in the
morning, impudently ascribed them to inspector's eggs, laid overnight.

* * * * *

"My pulse--feel it!" His Goody mother greeted the doctor with a feeble
voice from inarticulate lips, and a wrist outstretched. She was being
moribund; to pay him out for being behindhand.

He skipped all interims, and said, with negligible inaccuracy, "It's
only a quarter past."

"Don't talk, but feel!" Her failing senses could indulge a little
impatience; but it was like throwing ballast out of a balloon