When, hat in hand, he walked into Dick’s consulting room, he had made up his mind that he would pay the price of an overactive imagination for a prescription, walk out again, and try to forget that he had let a chance resemblance carry him off his feet.

But, as he watched the man who sat across from him, tilted back in his swivel chair, he was not so sure.  Here was the same tall figure, the heavy brown hair, the features and boyish smile of the photograph he had seen the night before.  As Judson Clark might have looked at thirty-two this man looked.

He made his explanation easily.  Was in town for the day.  Subject to these headaches.  Worse over the right eye.  No, he didn’t wear glasses; perhaps he should.

It wasn’t Clark.  It couldn’t be.  Jud Clark sitting there tilted back in an old chair and asking questions as to the nature of his fictitious pain!  Impossible.  Nevertheless he was of a mind to clear the slate and get some sleep that night, and having taken his prescription and paid for it, he sat back and commenced an apparently casual interrogation.

“Two names on your sign, I see.  Father and son, I suppose?”

“Doctor David Livingstone is my uncle.”

“I should think you’d be in the city.  Limitations to this sort of thing, aren’t there?”

“I like it,” said Dick, with an eye on the office clock.

“Patients are your friends, of course.  Born and raised here, I suppose?”

“Not exactly.  I was raised on a ranch in Wyoming.  My father had a ranch out there.”

Bassett shot a glance at him, but Dick was calm and faintly smiling.

“Wyoming!” the reporter commented.  “That’s a long way from here.  Anywhere near the new oil fields?”

“Not far from Norada.  That’s the oil center,” Dick offered, good-naturedly.  He rose, and glanced again at the clock.  “If those headaches continue you’d better have your eyes examined.”

Bassett was puzzled.  It seemed to him that there had been a shade of evasion in the other man’s manner, slightly less frankness in his eyes.  But he showed no excitement, nothing furtive or alarmed.  And the open and unsolicited statement as to Norada baffled him.  He had to admit to himself either that a man strongly resembling Judson Clark had come from the same neighborhood, or—­

“Norada?” he said.  “That’s where the big Clark ranch was located, wasn’t it?  Ever happen to meet Judson Clark?”

“Our place was very isolated.”

Bassett found himself being politely ushered out, considerably more at sea than when he went in and slightly irritated.  His annoyance was not decreased by the calm voice behind him which said: 

“Better drink considerable water when you take that stuff.  Some stomachs don’t tolerate it very well.”

The door closed.  The reporter stood in the waiting-room for a moment.  Then he clapped on his hat.