daughter he had married. She had visited the United States about
twenty-one years ago, met and married Delano, and remained in San
Francisco two or three months on their way to Japan. Delano had died on
the voyage across the Pacific, been buried at sea, and his widow had
returned to her family in Rouen and settled down in her brother's
household.

This was practically all he knew, for it was all that Hélène knew, and
Madame Delano never wasted words. It had not occurred to him to question
her. Their status in Rouen was established, and if not distinguished it
was indubitably respectable and not remotely suggestive of mystery.

Price, convinced that Hélène's father must have been a gentleman,
recalled that he had asked her one day to tell him something of the
Delanos, but his wife had replied vaguely that she believed her
mother had been too sad to talk about him for a long while, and then
probably had got out of the habit. She knew nothing more than she
already had told him.

It came back to him, however, that several times his wife's casual
references to the past, and particularly regarding her parents, had not
dove-tailed, but that he had dismissed the impression; attributing it to
some lapse in his own attention. He had a bad habit of listening and
thinking out a knotty business problem at the same time. And there is a
curious inhibition in loyal minds which forbids them to put two and two
together until suspicion is inescapably aroused.

He had a very well ordered mind, furnished with innumerable little pigeon
holes, which flew open at the proper vibration from his admirable memory.
He concentrated this memory upon a little bureau of purely personal