“You know the rest, for you saved me.  When I struggled back to life, without the will to live, you shamed and stung me into effort.  You brought the new master-influence into my life, taught me that the old ambition, the old work-ardour was not dead.  Those months with you in Paris, in Germany, in London at the feet of great men saw a veritable new birth.  I ceased to be Henry Chedridge, lover, and became Henry Callandar, scientist.  All this I owe to you.”

The other raised his hand.

“No, not that.  Some impulse I may have given you, but you have made yourself what you are.  But—­you have not told me all yet?”

“No.”  Again the doctor began his uneasy pacing of the room.  “The rest is harder to tell.  It is not so clear.  It has nothing to do with facts at all.  It is just that when I first began to show signs of overwork this last time I became troubled with an idea, an obsession.  It had no foundation.  It persisted without reason.  It was fast becoming unbearable!”

He paused in his restless pacing and Willits’ keen eyes noticed the look of strain which had aroused his alarm some months ago.  Nevertheless he asked in his most matter-of-fact tone, “And the idea was—?”

Callandar hesitated.  “I can hardly speak of it yet in the past tense.  The idea is—­that Molly is not dead!”

“Good Heavens!” ejaculated the professor, startled out of his calm.  “But have you any reason to doubt?  To—­to base—­”

“None whatever.  No enquiries which I have made cast doubt upon the mother’s words.  But on the other hand I have been unable to confirm them.  I cannot find where my wife died—­except that there is no record of her death in the Cleveland registries.  She did not die in Cleveland.”

“But you have told me that they were seldom at home.  That the mother was a great traveller.”

“Yes.  The want of evidence in Cleveland proves nothing.”

“Did you feel any doubt at first?”

“Absolutely none.  The gloomy house, the empty hall, the white face and black dress of the woman in the door, the look of horror and anger in her eyes—­yes, and a kind of grim triumph too—­all served to drive the fatal message home.  Dead!—­There was death in the air of that house, death in the ghastly face—­in the cruel, toneless words!—­After my tedious recovery I made an effort to see Mrs. Weston, although I had conceived a horror of the woman, but she was gone.  The house had been sold.  I tried to trace her without result.  She seemed to have vanished off the face of the earth.”

“And how long ago did the whole thing happen?”

“Twelve years.  I was twenty-three when I went to claim my bride.  I am thirty-five now.”

“Dear me!” said the little man sincerely, “I have always thought you older than that!  But twelve years is—­twelve years!  And you say this doubt is a very recent thing?”

“Yes.  I have told you the thing is absurd.  But I can’t help it.”