"It's very good of you to come down at such short notice, Sir Heron.''
"Only my duty."
The great car swept down Portland Place, down Regent Street. At the Circus, Heron Baynet picked up the speaking-tube, and called, "Take the Bromley road, please."
"Wonderful woman, your mother," he said suddenly. "I wish I could have done more for her."
"There's no chance, then?"
"None now, I'm afraid." The car purred on out of London, and after a long time the specialist said: "Not that there ever was more than the ghost of a chance."
"There was a chance then--once?" Ronnie's face, seen in the intermittent light of the passing street-lamps, showed white with misery. Again he was remembering that other night--the night when he had waited with Smithers outside Julia's door.
"Meaning?" prevaricated the specialist.
"This." Bonnie's teeth clenched on the Bullet. "Suppose that my mother had gone away to Switzerland or the south of France a year ago, she might have been saved?"
"I doubt it."