"No," returned the reporter. "Is she? I'm sorry."

"If you're sorry," urged the doctor eagerly, "you'll help her. She is
going to London alone to find her husband. He has disappeared. She
thinks that he has been murdered, or that he is lying ill in some
hospital. I told her if any one could help her to find him you could. I
had to say something. She's very ill."

"To find her husband in London?" repeated Ford. "London is a large
town."

"She has photographs of him and she knows where he spends his time,"
pleaded the doctor. "He is a company promoter. It should be easy for
you."

"Maybe he doesn't want her to find him," said Ford. "Then it wouldn't be
so easy for me."

The old doctor sighed heavily. "I know," he murmured. "I thought of
that, too. And she is so very pretty."

"That was another thing I noticed," said Ford.

The doctor gave no heed.

"She must stop worrying," he exclaimed, "or she will have a mental
collapse. I have tried sedatives, but they don't touch her. I want to
give her courage. She is frightened. She's left a baby boy at home, and
she's fearful that something will happen to him, and she's frightened
at being at sea, frightened at being alone in London; it's pitiful." The