"No, not that. Some impulse I may have given you, but you have made
yourself what you are. But--you have not told me all yet?"

"No." Again the doctor began his uneasy pacing of the room. "The rest is
harder to tell. It is not so clear. It has nothing to do with facts at
all. It is just that when I first began to show signs of overwork this
last time I became troubled with an idea, an obsession. It had no
foundation. It persisted without reason. It was fast becoming
unbearable!"

He paused in his restless pacing and Willits' keen eyes noticed the look
of strain which had aroused his alarm some months ago. Nevertheless he
asked in his most matter-of-fact tone, "And the idea was--?"

Callandar hesitated. "I can hardly speak of it yet in the past tense.
The idea is--that Molly is not dead!"

"Good Heavens!" ejaculated the professor, startled out of his calm. "But
have you any reason to doubt? To--to base--"

"None whatever. No enquiries which I have made cast doubt upon the
mother's words. But on the other hand I have been unable to confirm
them. I cannot find where my wife died--except that there is no record
of her death in the Cleveland registries. She did not die in Cleveland."

"But you have told me that they were seldom at home. That the mother was
a great traveller."

"Yes. The want of evidence in Cleveland proves nothing."