He might just as well have examined the back of the doctor’s head.

‘He’s not a patient of mine,’ Sir Jasper said.  ’I’m only one of the visiting doctors at Dr. Bream’s establishment.  I don’t go there unless he sends for me, and I keep no notes of his cases.  You will have to ask him.  If I am not mistaken his hours are from ten to twelve.  And now’—­Sir Jasper rose—­’as I can only congratulate you on your splendid health—­no, I really cannot prescribe anything—­literally nothing—­’

Isidore Bamberger had left three patients in the waiting-room and was obliged to go away, as his ‘splendid health’ did not afford him the slightest pretext for asking more questions.  He deposited his two guineas on the mantelpiece neatly wrapped in a bit of note-paper, while Sir Jasper examined the handle of the door with a stony gaze, and he said ‘good morning’ as he went out.

‘Good morning,’ answered Sir Jasper, and as Mr. Bamberger crossed the threshold the single clanging stroke of the doctor’s bell was heard, summoning the next patient.

The American man of business was puzzled, for he was a good judge of humanity, and was sure that when the Englishman said that he had never seen Van Torp he was telling the literal truth.  Mr. Bamberger was convinced that there had been some agreement between them to make it impossible for any one to see Feist.  He knew the latter well, however, and had great confidence in his remarkable power of holding his tongue, even when under the influence of drink.

When Tiberius had to choose between two men equally well fitted for a post of importance, he had them both to supper, and chose the one who was least affected by wine, not at all for the sake of seeing the match, but on the excellent principle that in an age when heavy drinking was the rule the man who could swallow the largest quantity without becoming talkative was the one to be best trusted with a secret; and the fact that Tiberius himself had the strongest head in the Empire made him a good judge.

Bamberger, on the same principle, believed that Charles Feist would hold his tongue, and he also felt tolerably sure that the former secretary had no compromising papers in his possession, for his memory had always been extraordinary.  Feist had formerly been able to carry in his mind a number of letters which Bamberger ‘talked off’ to him consecutively without even using shorthand, and could type them afterwards with unfailing accuracy.  It was therefore scarcely likely that he kept notes of the articles he wrote about Van Torp.

But his employer did not know that Feist’s memory was failing from drink, and that he no longer trusted his marvellous faculty.  Van Torp had sequestrated him and shut him up, Bamberger believed; but neither Van Torp nor any one else would get anything out of him.