"Oh," said he, with an air of relief, "it's the doctor you're wanting, is it? Well, he's at home. Come in." So the laird was a doctor? Of which sort, I wondered; medical, theological, or what? "I'm Mr. O'Brien," added my new acquaintance as he opened the front door for me. "You're quite sure it's not me you're wanting?" I had noticed more than a trace of accent in his own voice when he spoke, and there was no doubt now what it was; a very palpable Irish brogue. As he asked this question he looked at me with a curious mixture of humour and defiance. It seemed to me that the humour was assumed and the defiance genuine, but that may have been simply because the man impressed me unfavourably. "No," I replied with a continental bow, "I am not so fortunate." And then suddenly a thought flashed across me. Ought I to have answered in a very different key? But we were in the hall now and the next moment another gentleman appeared. "Here's Dr. Rendall," said Mr. O'Brien, and I bowed again. "My name is Mr. Roger Merton," I explained. "I have taken the liberty of calling upon you." "Come into my study, Mr. Merton," said Dr. Rendall. He spoke in a friendly enough voice, but if there was not a trace of suspicion in his eye too, I am greatly mistaken. And in both cases it seemed to me that it was suspicion tinged with apprehension, rather than the suspicion I was so deliberately cultivating. Indeed, I had not intended to cultivate any suspicion at all in this house, but fortunately (I think) I simply acted automatically. Taking him altogether, Dr. Rendall was a decidedly more prepossessing looking man than O'Brien. In fact he was rather good-looking, with grey hair and moustache, face of a deep bronze-red hue and very blue eyes. He was well set up, and quite well dressed too in rough tweeds, and the only thing against him was that look in his eye as we exchanged our first sentences. My wits were very wide awake by this time; I carried a picture of the outside of the house distinctly in my head as we turned out of the hall, and when we entered the study I knew it for the room where the blind had shut down. "Is Mrs. Rendall at home?" I enquired. O'Brien laughed. "There are no ladies in this house, but just the doctor and me!" said he. So no modest matron or maid had pulled the blind down. It had been Dr. Rendall's study blind, whipped down obviously by the doctor himself the instant he heard a strange footstep, and now raised again. Why had it been dropped? What had it hidden? In the look of the room itself there was not a suggestion of an answer to either question. It was just an ordinary man's study, a cross between a smoking room and a library, a much more comfortable room than the outside of that house promised. Yet people do not suddenly pull down blinds in the middle of the forenoon for no reason at all.