"You fainted? For how long were you unconscious?" He added a few more questions, nodded his shaggy head, and crossing the room sat down at his desk. He opened a book, massively bound, where on each page was printed, hideous and suggestive, an anatomical sketch of the human form divine.
"I'd like your name in full." He picked up the card which McTaggart had sent in by the parlour maid.
"P. M. McTaggart—what does that stand for?"
"It's rather a mouthful." The owner smiled. "Peter Maramonte."
The specialist glanced up shrewdly.
"Italian?—I thought so."
"On my mother's side. My father was Scotch, an Aberdonian."
"Your parents are living?"
"No, both dead." He stood there, tall and sombre, watching the other write in a thin, crabbed hand the unusual name.
"Any hereditary tendency to heart trouble?"