underneath the sands.

"Richard Hamel," he repeated. "Do you mean that you are the son of
Hamel, the R.A., who used to be in these parts so often? He was my
brother's friend."

"I am his son."

"But his son was killed in the San Francisco earthquake. I saw his
name in all the lists. It was copied into the local papers here."

Hamel knocked the ashes from his pipe.

"I take a lot of killing," he observed. "I was in that earthquake,
right enough, and in the hospital afterwards, but it was a man named
Hamel of Philadelphia who died."

Mr. Fentolin sat quite motionless for several moments. He seemed,
if possible, to have shrunken into something smaller still. A few
yards behind, Meekins had alighted from his bicycle and was standing
waiting.

"So you are Richard Hamel," Mr. Fentolin said at last very softly.
"Welcome back to England, Richard Hamel! I knew your father
slightly, although we were never very friendly."

He stretched out his hand from underneath the coverlet of his little
vehicle--a hand with long, white fingers, slim and white and
shapely as a woman's. A single ring with a dull green stone was on
his fourth finger. Hamel shook hands with him as he would have