“You know it is not,” said Ray, with a flash of indignation.  “I told you, the day I came, that my name is Palmer—­Raymond Palmer.”

“He is the man!” cried the assistant, starting up and regarding the invalid with a look of fear, “and it was Amos Palmer, the diamond merchant, who was robbed!”

“Can it be possible!” exclaimed the physician, amazed at this intelligence.  “That woman—­Mrs. Walton—­told me that he was her son, only at times he denied his own name, so when he told me his name was ‘Palmer’ that day I imagined it only a freak produced by his mania.”

Ray had been regarding the man curiously during this speech.  He surely did not appear like a person who would have anything to do with so daring a crime as that of which he had accused him.  He was strikingly noble in appearance; his manner was quietly dignified and self-possessed—­he had a finely shaped head, a kind eye, a genial smile, while his astonishment and dismay over what he had just been told seemed too genuine to be feigned.

“Did you not expect to find me in your reception-room?  Did no lady inform you of my arrival on the day I came here?” Ray inquired, searching his face earnestly.

“No, I saw no lady—­a servant came to tell me that a gentleman was waiting to see me,” responded the doctor.

“Then she must have gone immediately out and made off with all possible speed,” said Ray, musingly.

“But,” Doctor Wesselhoff continued, as if he had not heard his remark, “the woman I spoke of—­a Mrs. Walton—­called upon me the previous day and arranged with me to take you as a patient.  She was upward of fifty years of age, her hair was white, and she had the look of one who had known much care and sorrow.”

He then proceeded to relate all that had occurred during the interview, and Ray was astonished at the daring scheme which had been so successfully planned and carried out.

When the physician concluded his account, Ray gravely and positively declared: 

“I do not know any person by the name of Walton.  If this woman told you that she was my mother, she uttered a falsehood, for I have no mother—­she died more than ten years ago, and her place has been filled, as well as another could fill it, by a housekeeper.  My home is No. 119 ——­ street; but, Doctor Wesselhoff, if you still doubt my statements, and imagine that I am laboring under a peculiar mania, you can easily ascertain the truth by bringing my father here to prove my assertions.  I beg that you will do so without delay, for he must be suffering the most harrowing suspense on my account.”

Doctor Wesselhoff looked very much disturbed, for the more he talked with Ray, the more fully convinced he was that he had been unconsciously lending his aid to further an atrocious crime.

But as he saw how pale and weary his patient was, he was recalled to a sense of his duty as a physician.

He arose and kindly took the young man’s hand.