“No illusions!” he muttered to himself as he turned back. “No illusions under the Bergheim test.”
Mr. Petre rubbed the replaced eyelid and made one more protest in favor of due payment; but his advisor was determined. Mr. Petre thanked him warmly, though confused, and was off. The impressive mute showed him out, and in a couple of minutes he was ringing at another door half a dozen houses down the street.
Sir William Bland received him in a room extremely different from that in which he had just suffered. It was the room in which a man might live rather than work. There was a very large photograph of a Royalty in a sloping silver frame upon the table, autographed. There was a novel lying half-open. There was a bad portrait upon one wall, and a good, very small, Corot on the wall opposite; no other pictures at all. A small room, cozy, domestic; just the thing for the nerves.
The second and more jovial Great Specialist, Sir William Bland.
Sir William Bland greeted Mr. Petre as a lifelong friend, and this the reader will find the more remarkable if he remembers that nothing had been said of who Mr. Petre was or what Mr. Petre was worth. Sir William Bland was well suited to such a rôle. He had a round, kind face, in which only the eyes were insincere; hardly any eyebrows; simple steel spectacles, and a fine bald dome, with a fringe of hair.
He took his colleague’s note and read it, smiling as cheerfully over it as though it were a packet of mild fun. Then he gave tongue, surveying the newcomer with ease and happiness.
“Loss of memory? My dear sir? Loss of memory? That is what you say it is. Eh? Ah, yes; loss of memory. I have” (he glanced at the note), “I have the date here. Oh! Yes! April 3rd.... H’m.... Yes. Easier, my dear sir, easier if I could know something of—well” (resignedly), “I understand that the conditions are absolute.”
“Yes,” said Mr. Petre.