Haythorne nodded his head. “Made quite a stir at the time. His name was Womble—Graham Womble. He had a magnificent practice. I knew him somewhat.”
“Well, what I was trying to get at was what had become of them. I was wondering if you had heard. They left no trace, hide nor hair.”
“He covered his tracks cunningly.” Haythorne cleared his throat. “There was rumor that they went to the South Seas—were lost on a trading schooner in a typhoon, or something like that.”
“I never heard that,” Messner said. “You remember the case, Mrs. Haythorne?”
“Perfectly,” she answered, in a voice the control of which was in amazing contrast to the anger that blazed in the face she turned aside so that Haythorne might not see.
The latter was again on the verge of asking his name, when Messner remarked:
“This Dr. Womble, I’ve heard he was very handsome, and—er—quite a success, so to say, with the ladies.”
“Well, if he was, he finished himself off by that affair,” Haythorne grumbled.
“And the woman was a termagant—at least so I’ve been told. It was generally accepted in Berkeley that she made life—er—not exactly paradise for her husband.”
“I never heard that,” Haythorne rejoined. “In San Francisco the talk was all the other way.”