CHAPTER XII.
AMOS PALMER FINDS HIS SON.
"What do you mean?" Doctor Wesselhoff sharply demanded, and losing color himself at the sudden suspicion that he also might have been the dupe of a set of rogues.
"Haven't you seen an account of the affair in the papers?" Doctor Huff asked. "They were full of it for two weeks after you left home."
"No, I did not see a New York paper from the time I started until I returned. I could not get one, even if I had not had too many cares and been too much absorbed in my wife's critical condition to think of or read news of any kind," Doctor Wesselhoff replied. Then, with a sudden thought, as he turned again to Ray: "Young man, is not your name Walton?"
"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.