“Careful, Hampton,” cautioned the elder man.

“I’d like to see him,” pursued Craig to the younger.  “You know him?”

“Know him?  I should say I do.  Good-looking, good practice, and all that, but—­why, he must have hypnotized that girl!  Cynthia thinks he’s wonderful.”

“I’d like to see him,” suggested Craig.

“Very well,” agreed Hampton, taking him at his word.  “Much as I dislike the fellow, I have no objection to going down to his beauty-parlor with you.”

“Thank you,” returned Craig, as we excused ourselves and left the elder Doctor Haynes.

Several times on our journey down Hampton could not resist some reference to Chapelle for commercializing the profession, remarks which sounded strangely old on his lips.

Chapelle’s office, we found, was in a large building on Fifth Avenue in the new shopping district, where hundreds of thousands of women passed almost daily.  He called the place a Dermatological Institute, but, as Hampton put it, he practised “decorative surgery.”

As we entered one door, we saw that patients left by another.  Evidently, as Craig whispered, when sixty sought to look like sixteen the seekers did not like to come in contact with one another.

We waited some time in a little private room.  At last Doctor Chapelle himself appeared, a rather handsome man with the manner that one instinctively feels appeals to the ladies.

He shook hands with young Haynes, and I could detect no hostility on Chapelle’s part, but rather a friendly interest in a younger member of the medical profession.

Again I was thrown forward as a buffer.  I was their excuse for being there.  However, a newspaper experience gives you one thing, if no other—­assurance.

“I believe you have a patient, a Miss Virginia Blakeley?” I ventured.

“Miss Blakeley?  Oh yes, and her sister, also.”

The mention of the names was enough.  I was no longer needed as a buffer.

“Chapelle,” blurted out Hampton, “you must have done something to her when you treated her face.  There’s a little red spot over her nose that hasn’t healed yet.”

Kennedy frowned at the impetuous interruption.  Yet it was perhaps the best thing that could have happened.

“So,” returned Chapelle, drawing back and placing his head on one side as he nodded it with each word, “you think I’ve spoiled her looks?  Aren’t the freckles gone?”

“Yes,” retorted Hampton, bitterly, “but on her face is this new disfigurement.”

“That?” shrugged Chapelle.  “I know nothing of that—­nor of the trance.  I have only my specialty.”

Calm though he appeared outwardly, one could see that Chapelle was plainly worried.  Under the circumstances, might not his professional reputation be at stake?  What if a hint like this got abroad among his rich clientele?

I looked about his shop and wondered just how much of a faker he was.  Once or twice I had heard of surgeons who had gone legitimately into this sort of thing.  But the common story was that of the swindler—­or worse.  I had heard of scores of cases of good looks permanently ruined, seldom of any benefit.  Had Chapelle ignorantly done something that would leave its scar forever?  Or was he one of the few who were honest and careful?