“Doctor Wesselhoff, sit down if you please; I want to talk with you for a few moments.”

The physician obeyed, but with some surprise, for both the look and manner of his patient convinced him that he was perfectly rational.

“I have been very ill, have I not?” Ray inquired.

“Yes, but you are much better and steadily improving.”

“How long have I been sick?”

“It is more than five weeks now since you were attacked.”

Ray frowned at this information.

How must his father feel regarding his strange absence?  What had become of that cunning thief and the diamonds? were questions which suggested themselves to him.

But he simply asked: 

“When did you return to New York?”

“About a week ago,” the physician replied.  “I was very sorry to have to leave you as I did, but the summons to my wife was imperative, and of course my duty was by her side.”

A sarcastic smile curled Ray’s lips at this last remark.

“I am only surprised that you returned at all,” he quietly responded.

“Why?” inquired the physician, with some astonishment.

“It is not always safe, you know,” Ray answered, looking him straight in the eye, “for one who has aided and abetted a stupendous robbery to appear so soon upon the scene of his depredations.”

Doctor Wesselhoff’s face fell.

He had hoped that, when the young man should recover, all signs of his peculiar mania would disappear; but this did not seem much like it, and he began to fear the case might prove a very obstinate one.

“I think you must rest now,” he remarked, evading the subject; “you have talked long enough this time.”

“Perhaps I have, but I do not intend to rest until I have come to some definite understanding regarding my relations with you,” Ray responded, resolutely.

“Well, then, what do you mean by a definite understanding?” the physician asked, thinking it might be as well to humor him a little.

“I want to know how far you are concerned in this plot to keep me a prisoner here?  I want to know in what way you are connected with that woman who called herself Mrs. Vanderbeck, and who enticed me here with valuable diamonds, only to steal them from me?  I believe I am in the power of a gang of thieves, and though I cannot reconcile it with what I had heard of you previously, that you must be associated in some way with them.”

Ray had spoken rapidly, and with an air and tone of stern command, which puzzled while it impressed the doctor.

“You bring a very serious charge against me, my young friend,” he gravely remarked, but without betraying the slightest resentment; “but perhaps if you will tell me your side of the story I shall understand you better, and then I will explain my authority for detaining you here.”

Doctor Wesselhoff was strangely attracted toward his patient.  He did not seem at all like an insane person, except upon that one subject, and he would not have regarded that as a mania if he had not been assured of it by Mrs. Walton.  He began to think there might at least be some misunderstanding, and that it would be as well to let the young man exhaust the subject once for all; then he could judge the better regarding the treatment he needed.