"Was there any rhyme or reason for the suicide?"
"One was suggested that I would rather not repeat."
The closed eye opened to find the blue pair fallen. "I think it might help, General. Mrs. Dysone is evidently a woman of strong character, and anything——"
"She is, God knows!" cried the miserable man. "Everybody knows it now—her servants especially—though nobody used to treat them better. Why, in India—but we'll let it go at that, if you don't mind. I have provided for the widow."
Dollar bowed over his bit of steel tubing, but this time put it down so hastily that it rolled off the table. General Dysone was towering over him with shaking hand outstretched.
"I can't say any more," he croaked. "You must come down and see her for yourself; then you could do the talking—and I shouldn't feel such a damned cur! By God, sir, it's awful, talking about one's own wife like this, even for her own good! It's worse than I thought it would be. I know it's different to a doctor—but—but you're an old soldierman as well, aren't you? Didn't I hear you were in the war?"
"I was."
"Well, then," cried the General, and his blue eyes lit up with simple cunning, "that's where we met! We've run up against each other again, and I've asked you down for this next week-end! Can you manage it? Are you free? I'll write you a check for your own fee this minute, if you like—there must be nothing of that kind down there. You don't mind being Captain Dollar again, if that was it, to my wife?"
His pathetic eagerness, his sensitive loyalty—even his sudden and solicitous zest in the pious fraud proposed—made between them an irresistible appeal. Dollar had to think; the rooms up-stairs were not empty; but none enshrined a more interesting case than this sounded. On the other hand, he had to be on his guard against a weakness for mere human interest as apart from the esoteric principles of his practise. People might call him an empiric—empiric he was proud to be, but it was and must remain empiricism in one definite direction only. Psychical research was not for him—and the Dysone story had a psychic flavor.
In the end he said quite bluntly: