“Which suggests our next step,” he said, turning the subject.  “I hope that Butler has found out the retreat of Veronica Haversham.”

We discovered Miss Haversham at last at Dr. Klemm’s sanitarium, up in the hills of Westchester County, a delightful place with a reputation for its rest cures.  Dr. Klemm was an old friend of Kennedy’s, having had some connection with the medical school at the University.

She had gone up there rather suddenly, it seemed, to recuperate.  At least that was what was given out, though there seemed to be much mystery about her, and she was taking no treatment as far as was known.

“Who is her physician?” asked Kennedy of Dr. Klemm as we sat in his luxurious office.

“A Dr. Maudsley of the city.”

Kennedy glanced quickly at me in time to check an exclamation.

“I wonder if I could see her?”

“Why, of course—­if she is willing,” replied Dr. Klemm.

“I will have to have some excuse,” ruminated Kennedy.  “Tell her I am a specialist in nervous troubles from the city, have been visiting one of the other patients, anything.”

Dr. Klemm pulled down a switch on a large oblong oak box on his desk, asked for Miss Haversham, and waited a moment.

“What is that?” I asked.

“A vocaphone,” replied Kennedy.  “This sanitarium is quite up to date, Klemm.”

The doctor nodded and smiled.  “Yes, Kennedy,” he replied.  “Communicating with every suite of rooms we have the vocaphone.  I find it very convenient to have these microphones, as I suppose you would call them, catching your words without talking into them directly as you have to do in the telephone and then at the other end emitting the words without the use of an earpiece, from the box itself, as if from a megaphone horn.  Miss Haversham, this is Dr. Klemm.  There is a Dr. Kennedy here visiting another patient, a specialist from New York.  He’d like very much to see you if you can spare a few minutes.”

“Tell him to come up.”  The voice seemed to come from the vocaphone as though she were in the room with us.

Veronica Haversham was indeed wonderful, one of the leading figures in the night life of New York, a statuesque brunette of striking beauty, though I had heard of often ungovernable temper.  Yet there was something strange about her face here.  It seemed perhaps a little yellow, and I am sure that her nose had a peculiar look as if she were suffering from an incipient rhinitis.  The pupils of her eyes were as fine as pin heads, her eyebrows were slightly elevated.  Indeed, I felt that she had made no mistake in taking a rest if she would preserve the beauty which had made her popularity so meteoric.

“Miss Haversham,” began Kennedy, “they tell me that you are suffering from nervousness.  Perhaps I can help you.  At any rate it will do no harm to try.  I know Dr. Maudsley well, and if he doesn’t approve—­well, you may throw the treatment into the waste basket.”