"'Very nice of you, I'm sure. Step in. Just the day for a constitutional,' And then, as we started off and the carriage rolled round the corner out of sight, his mood changed. 'Friend of the family?' he asked, keenly.
"'You can call me that. Of Miss Macedoine certainly.'
"'Now there was a woman!' he ejaculated, opening an immense cigarette case, like a bandolier, and offering it to me. 'I admire her very much, indeed. I was called in about a year ago. But you say you are a friend of hers. And she's dead. I suppose I shall have to go and attend to it. Only you know what's going on. This confounded Committee of Liberty and Progress have carried out a coup d' étât and there'll be very little liberty of movement until they're squashed. Between ourselves, that is. Thank the Lord my practice is out here among the Europeans. And it's bad enough here, I can tell you.'
"'You have lived in England?' I interposed.
"His lean, dark face wrinkled with humour.
"'Well, considering I was casualty surgeon at St. Barnabas Hospital for nearly three years, I rather think I have. Yes, I took my degrees at Guys, and I don't mind admitting I wish I was in London now. But I have an old mother and seven sisters who have never been farther than Volo in their lives, and so I resign myself.'
"'Greek?' I enquired. He flushed dark red.
"'Scarcely,' he said in a suppressed sort of voice. I won't bother you with local animosities. We are Spanish Jews. Not very good ones, perhaps, but we keep to ourselves and manage to keep the wolf from the door. And now,' he said with a brisk yet courteous movement of his hand to my arm, 'who the blazes are you, and what do you want to know?'
"I told him succinctly, and he nodded to each fact of importance as he took it in.
"'Mind you,' I told him, 'I don't defend her behaviour. She shouldn't have told her father she was married when she wasn't. He might have——' Doctor Sadura made a gesture of flinging something away impatiently.